MATHEMATICS

 

Mathematics. 

Metaphysics or Transphysics, sometimes also called 

Theology, rises one degree higher still in abstraction 

and consequently also in generalization. It passes 

over the reality of change by which bodies reveal 

themselves to the physical scientist, and reaches 

beyond the fundamental attribute of quantity, that 

inseparable property of bodies, in order to grasp the 

substance itself of them, the very being of things. 

And even if the things which the metaphysician 

studies are of a sensible, material nature, he studies 

them apart from their materiality ; so that the 

science of being came to be called without distinction 

the science of the immaterial. 

84 INTRODUCTORY NOTIONS 

Physics, Mathematics, Metaphysics : such is the 

trilogy of speculative philosophy, of the synthetic 

knowledge of the universal order of things. These 

ideas will be further developed when we come to 

pass in review the fundamental doctrines of each of 

those branches (Sections 12-17). 

To complete this tableau of the classification of 

philosophy, we must add to the group of speculative 

sciences in which disinterested knowledge is its 

own end, a group of practical sciences in which 

knowledge is subordinated to our conduct or to our 

activity. " Theoreticus sive speculativus intellect us 

in hoc proprie ab operativo sive practice) distinguitur, 

quod speculativus luibet pro line veritatem quam 

considerat, practicus autem veritatem consideratam 

ordinat in operationem tamquam in finem/ Loyic 

which regulates the acts of the understanding so as 

to secure by their normal functioning the acquisition 

of truth, and Mora! which directs our free acts 

towards our last end, are the two practical sciences 

that were mainly cultivated. The preliminaries of 

logic are grammar and rhetoric, and their official 

teaching was organized by the Paris Faculty of Arts 

on the lines of the ancient trivium. On the other hand, 

moral was accompanied by historical studies, chiefly 

by Bible History and a part of that wide department 

nowadays covered by the name of Social Sciences.* 

The subjoined scheme indicates the relations to 

philosophy, of the sciences that received most atten 

tion from the philosophers of the thirteenth century: 

Philosophy. Special Sciences connected. 

( i. Physics. Astronomy, Botany, Zoology, 

A. Theoretical ) Chemistry, Physics (in the 

Sciences } 2. Mathematics. ! modern sense). 

( 3. Metaphysics. 

B. Practical / 4. Logic. Grammar, Rhetoric. 

Sciences \ 5. Moral. Bible History, Social and 

I Political Sciences. 

1 Thomas Aquinas, In Lib. Boctii de Trinitatc, q. v. a. i (Vivt-s 

edition, vol. 28, pp. 526 and 527.) 

2 Willmann, Gesch. d. Idealismus, vol. ii., p. 418. 

SCHOLASTICISM AND THE MEDIEVAL SCIENCES 85 

50. This hierarchical conception of the various 

branches of human knowledge is the source of the 

relations established in the Middle Ages between 

philosophy and the special sciences. In the first 

place, the special sciences were not marked off from 

one another nor separated from philosophy as they 

are to-day. They were in process of formation. 

They rested on rudimentary observations, and the 

distinction between ordinary and scientific knowledge 

was unknown. They had their raison d etre as a 

preparation for philosophy rather than as independent 

branches of study. 1 In the second place it was 

inevitable that scholastic philosophy should assume 

a scientific character. How could it be otherwise, 

seeing that the detailed analytical data furnished 

by the special sciences that deal with physical nature 

are the indispensable materials for those synthetic 

views and large conceptions that form the proper 

object of philosophy ? In the sciences no less than 

in philosophy one and the same fundamental law 

governs the ideological process : the closest possible 

knowledge of the material world is the proper, 

adequate and natural object of the human intellect 

(Section 16). Therefore ought not every interpretation 

of the world, including the synthetic explanation 

sought by physics, mathematics, metaphysics even, 

rest on observation at every moment, and at every 

single step by which its progress advances ? Without 

such abiding contact with the living facts of the 

experimental sciences, what could the whole structure 

hope to be but a mere chimera devoid of all reality ? 

In the third place, medieval scholars recognised no 

distinction of nature between the special sciences and 

philosophy, since both are built up by one and the 

same intellectual process of abstraction. There 

1 Hence the current notion that in the Middle Ages the sciences 

formed an integral part of philosophy. " Die Naturwissenschaft ist 

den Scholastikern als Physik ein Teil cler Philosophic." Willmann, 

op. cit., vol. ii., p. 416. Cf. Hogan, op. cit., p. 48. 

S() INTUOnrcTOKY NOTIONS 

is only a difference of degree* resulting from the 

degree of abstraction to which the world is submitted 

in each : while the particular science selects for itself 

ontological aspects special to one group ol things, 

the synthetic science of philosophy embraces pro- 

founder aspects that are common to all material 

things. 

51. This principle oi the convergence ol philosophy 

and the sciences, as understood in the Middle Ages, 

gives nnitv and solidarity to tin 1 various departments 

of human knowledge. It has many excellent reasons 

to recommend it. The same, however, cannot be 

said of all the applications of the principle in the 

Middle Ages. \Ye shall not be in a position to deter 

mine exactly how far those applications were war 

ranted or unwarranted until we have tabulated from 

special monographs the numerous scientific theories 

of that time. This detailed study, though scarcelv 

better lhan begun, 1 has already shown that even in 

this direction the thirteenth century made consider 

able advances. When we shall have separated the 

elements of observation and experiment on the one 

hand from the philosophical theories based upon them 

on the other, we shall be able to assign their true 

value to each. 

The scientific observations made in the Middle Ages 

vary much in value. Some are correct though 

superficial ; others are prejudiced, a priori, ill- 

conducted and trivial. When the scholastics saw 

that the change of wine to vinegar, or of food to flesh 

and blood, was a substantial change, they started 

1 Works have been published on the sciences of the Middle Ages. 

For example : Jessen, 1-tottinik dcr Gc^cmcart und Vorzcit (Leipzig, 

1864) C arus, Gcschichtc dcr Zoologie (Munich, 1872) Giinther. Studio/ 

zur Gcschichtc dcr wathein. und f>hys. Geographic Berthelot, J.c* 

origines dc I alchiniic (Paris, 1885) Introduction a I etude dc la cliiwic 

dcs aiicicns ct du woven age (Paris, i8S9)Histoire dcs sciences. La 

chiwic au woven age (Paris, 1893) ; etc. There arc also numerous 

monographs, chiefly on Albert the Great and Roger Bacon. On the 

former, see also E. Michael, Gcschichtc dcs dcutschen Volkc* (Fribourg, 

1Q<">3). v. iii., pp. 396 , 44;, etc. 

SCHOLASTICISM AND THE MEDIEVAL SCIENCES 87 

from data that were no doubt superficial seeing 

that they were ignorant of the chemical constitution 

of bodies but nevertheless from facts faithfully 

observed. On the other hand, when they relied on 

the faith of antiquity to infer from the apparent im 

mutability of the stars that the matter of the heavenly 

bodies can be neither generated nor corrupted, they 

were accepting a fanciful datum on the strength of 

its traditional character rather than of any claim 

it could have to truth (78). If roses could reason 

they should infer the immortality of gardeners, 

" because never in the memory of a rose was a 

gardener seen to die ! " The medieval encyclopedias 

compiled by such men as Isidore of Seville, Rhaban 

Maur, Herrad of Landsberg, Hugh of St. Victor and 

Vincent of Beauvais are full of extraordinary alle 

gations, strange mixtures of fact and fancy, curious 

in the extreme, and bearing ample evidence of an 

utter carelessness about verifying observations and 

experiences. 1 Even the more distinguished of these 

men, Albert the Great, for example, whose scientific 

knowledge was remarkable, were not above such 

puerilities. Great mechanical inventions like the 

telescope and microscope could alone give men 

that passion for the natural sciences which is 

characteristic of modern times. But the thirteenth 

century made none of those discoveries : what wonder 

then that it did not largely use or profit by inductive 

methods ? The fault is due to a variety of causes 

which we are not called upon here to investigate ; 

assuredly, however, Philosophy cannot reasonably be 

blamed for failing to perform a task that was not 

within its competence. 

But, like science, like philosophy., Observations, 

accurate though commonplace, could and did lead 

to legitimate synthetic views : Phenomena like the 

transformation of wine support the hylemorphic 

1 Willmann, Didaktik, v. i., pp. 275 and fol. 

88 INTRODUCTORY NOTIONS 

theory of a twofold constitutive element in bodies, 

primal matter and substantial form. On the other 

hand, erroneous conceptions of fact engendered false, 

fanciful generalizations, such as the whole cosmology 

of the celestial bodies, the theory of the four sublunary 

elements and all that is involved in it (Section 15). 

Accidentally, no doubt, such false data could have 

led to true conclusions : Ex vero non sequitur nisi 

verum ; ex fa! so sequitur quodlibet. 

Furthermore and this is a point that deserves 

attention as the forms of all nature appeared to 

be eminently simple in character, thanks to the 

childish and superficial observations of that age, 

those people easily nattered themselves that they had 

wrested from nature practically all her secrets ! 

Hence the striking tendency to hasty generalizations. 

and the mania for making the facts of experience 

square with the needs of some preconceived theory 

in order to fit them by force into the current philo 

sophical synthesis. Such procedure is against the 

nature of things : it is like trying to build the dome; 

of an edifice before the foundation. 

Those vices of observation and generalization 

reached a climax in the hollow and inflated science 

of the epoch of the decadence, and exerted there a 

most fatal influence on the destinies of scholasticism 

(Section 19). 

SECTION 10. SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE 

PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL IDEAS. 

52. The definitions we have so far examined 

(Sections 3-9) all contain a " soul of truth." Those 

of them that aim at connecting philosophy with some 

body of doctrine, such as theology or the special 

sciences (Sections 8 and 9) are deeper in insight and 

richer in meaning than those which try to define it 

SCHOLASTICISM AND THE UNIVERSALS 89 

by its relation to some superficial non-doctrinal 

element (Sections 3-7). Still, neither of the two 

classes alone, nor both combined, can satisfy anyone 

who wants to understand scholasticism in itself and 

to get at its real genius ; they have all the common 

drawback of defining scholastic philosophy by that 

which is not philosophy (7). We cannot reach the 

heart of the system without familiarizing ourselves 

with the answers which scholasticism has given to 

the great philosophical questions raised by human 

enquiry, and seeking in these answers the character 

of the scholastic system. "It is clear," writes Will- 

mann, " that the principle of development in medieval 

scholasticism is to be sought, not in its relations with 

antiquity, or in its theological aspect, but in the 

domain of its purely philosophical speculations." 

But there are two senses in which the word philosophy 

is not uncommonly used (4). In its stricter meaning 

it is a complete and systematic collection of theories 

explicative of the universal order of things (55). 

It is, however, also taken to mean not the complete 

system but one or more isolated doctrines, answering 

to one or more of the problems raised by philosophers. 

53. It is from this second point of view philosophy 

is regarded by those who reduce scholasticism to an 

endless dispute about Universals. Haureau takes 

this controversy for the scholastic problem par 

excellence. He wants to know nothing further from 

the long procession of doctors who pass over his 

pages, than their opinions on the three questions 

proposed by Porphyry. The scholastics, says Taine, 

went mad over the question of the universals, " the 

only one bequeathed to them," " so abstract, and 

so confusingly complicated by the f hair- splitting 

1 " Es wird ersichtlich class der Nerv der Entwickelung der 

Scholastik im Mittelalter wider in ihrem Verhaltnisse zum Altertume, 

noch in ihrer theologischen Seite zu suchen ist, sondern im Gebiete 

des eigentlichen Philosophierens." Geschichte des Idealismus, t. ii., 

P- 349- 

90 INTRODUCTORY NOTIONS 

discussions of the Creeks." Or, again, according to 

M. Penjou : Philosophy found itself reduced, " in its 

ultimate analysis, to controversies like those between 

nominalists and realists, so obscure that we can 

nowadays scarcely understand the extraordinary 

amount of interest at that time attaching to them. " 

But M. Pen j on is sadly mistaken : the problem about 

the nature of the Universal is the common inheritance 

of all philosophies ; we find it in India as well as in 

Greece, in the Middle Ages as in the modern epoch, 

amongst Kantians and amongst German pantheists. 

Even those, however, who, with H aureau as against 

Penjon, show a, juster appreciation ol the real interest 

and significance of those time-honoured controversies, 

do not go far enough by merely pointing to them 

as forming "the. scholastic problem." To understand 

and define a, system of philosophy it is not enough 

to indicate the proMcm or />r<>h/< ,n* it deals with : the 

solutions offered hi if should be also outlined. \Vill- 

mann, lor example, takes account of those solutions, 

when he teaches that the dominant note of the 

scholastic philosophy is " the reconciliation of idealism 

and realism by the immanence of the idea in the 

sense realits\" The notion conveyed in those few 

words by the learned professor of Prague is at once 

accurate and profound : we believe, however, that 

it is incomplete. 4 

54. The early medieval philosophers discussed 

this problem of the universals according to the well- 

known terms in which it was raised by Porphyry 

in his Isagoge. Now, the Alexandrian philosopher 

divides the problem into three parts : (1) Do genera 

and species really exist in Nature, or are they mere 

1 Hist, dc hi Litter. An^laisc, t. iii., p. 222. 

- 1 enjon, rricis d /iistoire dc philosophic, p. 174. 

r! (icschichtc dcs Jdcalismus, t. ii., p. 322. 

1 It is completed fully by the author s brilliant exposition of scholas 

ticism in Sections 70-73. The author s attitude, moreover, is explained 

by the general point of view of the whole work as indicated by the title. 

SCHOLASTICISM AND THE UXIVERSALS 91 

creations of the mind ? (2) If they subsist really, 

are they corporeal or incorporeal things ? (3) And, 

finally, do they exist apart from the things of the 

world of sense, or are they realized in those things ? 

" Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem sive 

subsistant sive in nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive 

subsistentia corporalia sint an incorporalia, et utruni 

separaba a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et 

circa lisec consistentia, dicere recusabo." It is quite 

plain that this text of Porphyry s is completely 

within the domain of metaphysics. In the first 

question -on which the remaining two hinge it is 

the absolute reality of the universals, their existence or 

non-existence that is in dispute. It is in this crude 

and undeveloped form we find the question treated in 

early scholasticism. Its first disputants directed 

their attention exclusively to the ontological aspect 

of Porphyry s alternative ; the one party reduced 

universals to things pure and simple, the other to 

mere fictions or words. 1 

But it would be flying in the face of history to 

confine the activity of the early centuries of scholas 

ticism to one monotonous dispute about the 

Universals. What, for example, does history tell us of 

Boetius, the great educator of the early Middle Ages ? 

That he was not merely a professor of Logic, but also a 

master of Physics, of Metaphysics and of Psychology. 

His scholars learned a great deal more from him than 

the various meanings of the formulae of Porphyry ; 

they learned the distinction between sense and 

intellect, the theory of passio, the definition of person, 

substantial composition, the principle of causality, 

and so on. Many of those theories were of course 

wrongly understood, like the matter and form theory ; 

others were incomplete, like his theory of causes ; 

1 Compare our study on Le probletne des univevsaux dans son evolution 

historique du IXe au XHIe siecle (Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos., 1896), 

also our Histoire de la philosophic medicvale, pp. 167-173. 

92 INTRODUCTORY NOTIONS 

and the whole collection of them wanted that unity 

which the synthetic genius of the thirteenth century 

was afterwards to give them. But even what the 

early scholastics knew of them is quite sufficient to 

vindicate these philosophers from the charge of 

exclusivism. Neither they nor their successors ever 

allowed themselves to be hypnotized by a phrase 

from Porphyry like those Indian hirvanist* who 

lull themselves to unconsciousness by the monotonous 

repetition of unmeaning formula 1 . 

Then, if we follow the question of the Universals 

through the golden age of scholasticism we shall see 

at (nice that it entirely shakes off the* shackles in 

which it was bound up by the Alexandrian philo 

sopher, and, after his example, by his earlier medieval 

commentators also. At the end of the twelfth 

century the metaphysical point of view was completed 

by the development of the criteriologiccd and psycho 

logical aspects of the question the aspects which alone 

bring out clearly to view the real value of universal 

notions. 1 

There is nothing more interesting in the history 

of the ninth to the twelfth centuries than the gradual 

widening of the scope of this controversy. The 

full and complete solution of the problem raises, 

one after another, delicate questions in physics, 

metaphysics and psychology. It has a very intimate 

connection with the theories of Essence, Individuation, 

Abstraction and Exemplarism. The scholastics of 

the thirteenth century understood all this ; and far 

from lessening the importance of the whole question, 

they studied its influence upon all the various organic 

theories of their philosophical synthesis. The 

question was no longer an isolated one ; it became 

an organic portion of one vast system (65). 

1 Many of those who define scholasticism by the problem of the 

nniversals have failed to grasp the real meaning of the controversy. 

This is the case with Mr. Clifford Allbutt, in his brochure, Science 

and Medieval Thought (Cambridge, 1893), P- 3 1 - 

SCHOLASTICISM AND THE UNIVERSALS 93 

But yet it was only one element of the system. 

This latter included a large number of other elements 

as well : theological speculation on the divine attri 

butes ; metaphysical theories on Being, Substance, 

Cause, Individuation, Order, Categories ; contro 

versies in Physics about Matter and Form ; discussions 

on the origin and growth of knowledge, on Morality 

and Beatitude ; those and many others besides, 

which could never have arisen out of Porphyry s 

three questions. All this will be made more manifest 

in the course of the following pages. We can 

understand, therefore, with what justice it has been 

described as "a sort of conspiracy against history 

to single out from scholasticism some special ideo 

logical question, the universals, for example, as 

Cousin has, or the relations of sensation to pure 

ideas, as M. de Gerando has, and to draw 

from these a general appreciation of the philosophical 

movement in the Middle Ages." l 

1 Morin, Dictionnaire de philosophic et dc thcologic scolastique an 

moyen age (edited by Migne, 1856), p. 22. To define scholasticism, 

Morin has recourse to two methods of procedure : ( i ) he studies the 

developments of the concepts of Being and Substance in their relation 

to Dogma ; (2) he interprets the scholastic applications of ontological 

data to the sciences. Ibid., p. 23. 

OHAPTEE II. 

DOCTRINAL DKFIX 

SECTION 11. CONDITIONS KOI: A DOCTIIINAL 

DEFINITION. 

.">;">. Science i> not a meiv collection of theories 

about some special object, a simple juxtaposition 

>f fragments of knowledge, an encyclopedia upon 

a given subject. It is. slridlv speaking, a svstema- 

tized body of knowledge, that is, according to the 

expressive etymology of the word awcrwi. whose 

various parts or elements hold or hang together, 

harmonize and tit into one another like the cogs and 

wheels of a piece of machinery. It is only on con 

dition of such harmony that the manifold conclusions 

of a science can be reduced to unity, and thus establish 

order in the mind. 

So it is with all philosophies worthy of the name. 

The strongest of the great historical systems are 

those that were most firmly knit the Upanishad 

system, the Aristotelian, the Xeo-Platonic, the 

Cartesian, the Leibnitzian, the Kantian systems ; 

and each has had its special character and tendency 

impressed upon it by the organic unity of its theories 

no less than by these theories themselves. Scholastic 

philosophy in its golden age may be justly considered 

as one of those great convergent solutions of the 

enigma of things. 

56. To raise all the great fundamental questions 

of philosophy, and to reduce all the answers to unity ; 

CONDITIONS FOR A DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 95 

such are the two essential tasks of every philosophical 

system. System, as such, must be denned by the 

presence of both those elements. In order to define 

this or that particular system, Scholasticism, for 

example, as opposed to Kantism, we must examine 

into the body of doctrines peculiar to each, and 

study these doctrines both in themselves and in their 

mutual relations. It is evident that the solutions 

of the one system are not those of the other, and that 

in order to judge of them we must understand them. 

Those considerations make it clear that before we 

can bring together the elements of a doctrinal 

definition of scholasticism we must first interrogate 

its teachers on their fundamental theses, and 

secondly, that a doctrinal definition must needs be 

a terminal, not an initial one. The reader will there 

fore find in the following paragraphs an attempt 

at a brief exposition of scholastic teaching. And 

since a body of philosophical doctrines presents very 

great complexity, our definition of the scholastic 

system will be necessarily complex, even though 

it be confined to a mere outline. A definition ought 

to be brief, no doubt, but the logical demand for 

brevity must be understood in a relative sense. 

57. To convince ourselves of the complexity of a 

body of philosophical doctrine, we need only consider 

that the characteristics commonly employed to outline 

a philosophical system, describe in reality only some 

particular doctrine or group of doctrines within the 

system. When Victor Cousin, for example, classifies 

philosophical systems into sensualism, idealism, 

scepticism and mysticism, the first tw r o groups can 

have reference only to one single order of philosophical 

questions, that of the origin and certitude of know 

ledge. 1 

1 Mysticism in Cousin s thought stands for something too vague to 

admit of its being discussed as a system of philosophy. As for sceptic 

ism, it is not so easy to construct a doctrinal system out of the very 

denial of the possibility of doctrine ! 

96 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

Similarly, Renouvier s six fundamental oppositions 

employed as a basis for his Esquisse (Tune classifi 

cation systematique des syst ernes philosophiques, 1 are 

far from being each an adequate characteristic of 

a system. Of these oppositions : materialism and 

spiritualism ; evolutionism and creationism ; liber- 

terianism and determinism ; endaemonism and 

obligationism ; rationalism and iideism ; nnitism and 

infinitism ; each regards one doctrine alone, replies to 

one question alone. So true is this that the various 

alternative couples in question are quite compatible 

with one another in the same system, and that some of 

them are actually found united in every system. For 

example, scholastic philosophy is at the. same time 

spiritualist, creationist, libertarian, etc. ; while 

stoicism is materialist, evolutionist, determinist, etc. 

Not to mention that it is quite possible to multiply 

such types of fundamental opposition between 

different philosophical systems. 

It is, indeed, true that some determining charac 

teristics seem better adapted to designate a whole 

system of philosophy than others, as when we speak of 

pantheism or positivism. Yet this is not because 

these latter individualize the synthesis as such, in 

the entirety of its principles and doctrines, but rather 

because they designate some one or other of its most 

salient doctrines. Strictly speaking, pantheism is 

not a system, for it decides only one doctrine of a 

system, that of the unity or plurality of all being ; 

but what is true is this, that there are systems which 

are pantheistic, being at the same time either material 

istic like that of David of Dinant, or idealistic like 

that of Hegel. Similarly, positivism pronounces 

upon one single problem : that of the origin or source 

of all our knowledge ; but everybody knows that 

Comte s positivism and Spencer s positivism are full 

of other equally important doctrines bearing upon 

1 2 vol., i88q. 

CONDITIONS FOR A DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 97 

problems quite other than the positivity of science. 

We see then that in order to delineate a system of 

philosophy in its entirety we must review all its 

fundamental theories, give a critical estimate of them, 

and thus distinguish them from those of other systems 

on the same subjects. The idea of the fundamental 

antinomies spoken of by Eenouvier, may indeed 

be utilized, but only on condition of applying them 

to the special questions overlooked by that author, 

and of insisting that the members of the various 

couples enumerated are disjunctively compatible with 

one another in the same system. 

58. So long as we regard a number of different 

systems under one single aspect, we may group them 

in categories : Lange has written the history of 

Materialism, Willmann that of Idealism. But if, on 

the other hand, we take any system in its doctrinal 

fulness, it will be found to form a unique and 

individual whole. We can give it a singular name, 

call it Platonism, Thomism, Kantism ; but define it 

we cannot except by specifying its various doctrines 

by their distinctive characteristics. The ideal thing 

would be to give a sketch of all the doctrines ; we 

should then know how and why the system of St. 

Thomas differs from that of Scotus or from that of St. 

Bonaventure. But as we have said above and will 

show in the sequel, there is such a remarkable agree 

ment amongst the great doctors of the thirteenth 

century upon all fundamental questions, that 

their respective syntheses may well be considered 

as so many species of one and the same genus : 

scholasticism. 

59. Let us now endeavour to apply to the common 

data of the scholastic synthesis the process of definition 

just outlined ; and for this purpose let us follow 

scholasticism through the great departments into 

which its leading exponents have divided all philo 

sophy. Of course our outline can have no pretension 

98 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

to completeness of exposition ; it will not give in 

a few pages what the ablest authors have expounded 

in volumes. It will be mainly historical, and will aim 

at a faithful presentation of the great organic principles 

of medieval scholasticism. People like Taine who are 

ignorant of these principles see in scholasticism only 

a heap of absurdities. Those who understand them 

only partially are often mistaken about the meaning 

of scholastic theories ; and this is the case with a. 

large number of our modern historians of scholasticism 

as soon as they approach the, study of it in detail. 

SECTION 1-2. METAPHYSICS. 

()0. Although metaphysics is the product of the 

highest intellectual abstraction, yet it has for its 

chief object the substance or essence of the things of 

sense ; and accordingly, so far from resting on the 

quicksands of fancy, it is anchored to the firm rock 

of reality. If, however, it deals with the world of 

sense (as material object) the world which will 

forever remain the proper sphere of all human 

investigation (87) it is only by ignoring the 

properties based upon change that it does so, and 

by grasping the substance alone, the being and the 

constitutive principles of things (as formal object). 

" Philosophi erit considerare de omni substantia 

inquantum hujusmodi." 

Secondarily, metaphysics deals with non-substantial 

being, with adventitious or accidental being. Thus 

we justify the definition of metaphysics as the science 

of being that is immaterial by abstraction, of being 

taken simply as such, of being as stripped of 

everything with which the purely sensible order 

endows it. 

1 St. Thomas Aquinas, in IV. Metaph., lect. 5. 

METAPHYSICS 

99 

61. Being may be studied under certain very general 

aspects which serve to bring out clearly the meaning 

of so simple and all-embracing a concept. These 

are called the transcendental attributes of being. 

Such, for example, are the aspects of unity, goodness 

and truth (unum, verum, bonum). 

Furthermore, being is not a something that is 

changeless and merely static : it must be studied 

not merely in its state of repose but also in its inception 

or becoming, in its evolution or change (in its fieri 

as well as in its esse). The things of experience have 

only a finite degree of reality, and even that not 

actualized all at once. The constant evolution or 

change to which things are apparently subject is an 

indication that they are continually gaining or losing 

reality, that they can appear and disappear. Take 

a thing in any state whatever : that state will evoke 

the idea of a prior state in which the thing was not 

what it now actually is. Before actually being, it could 

be, what it is. A chemical combination presupposes 

others, and can lead to still further combinations 

of matter. Before a man reaches the ripeness of age 

and knowledge and virtue he must have passed 

through all the successive stages of their infancy 

and youth. Now, in order to be able to pass from 

A to A 1 the being must have already possessed in 

A some real principle of the change ; it was really 

capable of receiving or undergoing a new determina 

tion or modification ; it possessed the capacity, or 

was in the capacity of becoming what it now actually 

is. Actuality (actus) is therefore the degree of being 

(Ji/rsXs^s/x), of actual or positive perfection in a 

thing ; potentiality (potentia), the mere capacity of 

receiving some such complement of being or per 

fection it is non-being, therefore, if you will, yet 

not mere nothingness, but such non-being as implies 

within itself the real principle of a future actualization. 

This actualization, this passage from the potential 

100 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

to the actual state, bears the technical name of 

movement, denned by the scholastics after Aristotle 

as " the actualization peculiar to a being which is 

still formally potential." " Convenientissime Philo- 

sophus definit motum dicens quod motus est actus 

existentis in potentia secundum quod hujusmodi." 1 

The pair of ideas " potency and act " thus became 

synonymous with ifc being determined and being 

deter minable." In this general sense it passed 

beyond its original signification of a process of 

becoming, an organic evolution or fieri, and served to 

interpret all compositions, without exception, of all 

being that is contingent or limited in its reality. 

It was regarded as a primordial distinction, of 

universal application in the order of the real being, 

and thus became an exceedingly fertile conception 

in metaphysics. Substance and accident, essence 

and existence, specific essence and individual, are 

so many examples of the " potency and act " couple. 

Nor is this fundamental distinction peculiar to 

metaphysics ; it effects an entrance into other 

domains, into logic, physics, psychology and ethics ; 

and everywhere it expresses the same elemental 

relation of the " determinable " to the " determined " : 

the genus is to the species, the corporeal matter to 

the soul, the passive intellect to the active, the free 

act to its subjective end, as "potency" is to " act." 

62. The first important application of the " potency 

and act " couple is found in the great classification 

of things into substances and accidents. The substance 

or substantial being is the being that exists without 

needing any other being in which to inhere for its 

existence, and which serves as subject or support 

for other realities. Man, horse, house, are substances ; 

whereas the virtue of the virtuous man, the colour 

of the horse, the size of the house are accidents. 

These adventitious realities (ac-cidere) are ontological 

1 St. Thomas, In III. Phys., lect. 2. 

METAPHYSICS 101 

determinations (actus) of the substance (potentia). 

Here we touch, upon the famous Aristotelian classi 

fication of the categories of being. And as a matter 

of fact the scholastics took up and developed very 

considerably the study of the nine accidental pre 

dicaments, especially those of quality, quantity, 

relation, time and space. 

The study of quality (accidens modificativum 

substantiae in seipsa) raises some important contro 

versies passed over by Aristotle, notably that 

regarding the distinction between a substance and 

its powers or faculties of action. Can action proceed 

directly from the substance in contingent beings, 

or do these act through the medium of faculties ? 

This question was hotly debated in the thirteenth 

century, and its solution is of great importance in 

psychology. Opinions were divided. The Thomists 

held that there is a real distinction between substance 

and faculty, so that the actual operation as such is 

a determination or actus which affects the substance 

not directly but through an intermediary, the faculty : 

" operatio est actus secundus." St. Bonaventure, 

on the other hand, steers between Thomism and the 

old Augustinian doctrine of the identity of the soul 

with its faculties ; while Duns Scotus deals with 

the matter in a way peculiar to himself, by the 

distinctio formalis a parte rei (65). 

63. The real distinction between matter and form, 

the two constitutive principles of corporeal sub 

stances, is likewise a particular application or aspect of 

the distinction of " potency " and "act." The doctrine 

of matter and form is regarded by the scholastics, 

just as by Aristotle, as belonging properly and 

primarily to physics (74). Wherever there is change 

throughout nature, there must be found matter and 

form. The piece of oak is the passive recipient 

subject (materia) of the shape or figure (forma) 

introduced by the carver s chisel. But these are 

102 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

respectively a Ci second " or " derived " matter and 

form. For the oak itself one day made its first 

appearance and grew to be a tree by the gradual 

assimilation into the acorn of innumerable chemical 

elements themselves substantial beings which were 

gradually transformed into cells of " oak." And 

so we may ascend the path of change indefinitely. 

Now, in order to explain the transformation of 

substances, their chemical combination and decom 

position, Aristotle demanded, in the various 

substantial realities which appear and disappear, a 

permanent substrate which lie called primary matter 

(r t --wrr, l/.r t ) and a specific principle which he 

called substantial form (//doc). The intrinsic union 

of matter and form gives rise to the corporeal sub 

stance. The matter being the principle of indeter- 

mination and the form that of determination, there 

is an unmistakable relation, in the domain of corporeal 

substances, between these two pairs of ideas, matter 

and form on the one hand, and potency and act on 

the other. 

But is composition from matter and form applicable 

outside the corporeal order of things ? Does it hold 

for incorporeal substances, so as to be thus a mark 

of all contingent being ? Here we reach a point at 

which the Thomistic and Franciscan teachings bifur 

cate. The latter completely identify potency and act 

with form and matter, and therefore represent the 

latter composition as the all-pervading, necessary 

property of all created things whatsoever. This is 

not the view of Albert the Great and St. Thomas. 

These doctors teach that primary matter enters as 

a constituent into corporeal substances only ; it is 

the foundation of spatial extension, of multitude, 

and of the imperfection of bodies generally. In this 

they are rather followers of Aristotle, as their 

opponents are of Avicebron. 

There was general agreement in recognising an 

METAPHYSICS 103 

existential dependence of matter on form though 

some held the contrary opinion (Henry of Ghent, 

for example). St. Thomas taught expressly that 

God could not bring primary matter into existence 

without some substantial form as determining 

principle : it would be intrinsically impossible to 

do so, seeing that the potential, as such, cannot be 

in act. 

The converse question whether form is neces 

sarily allied with matter, or whether a form of itself 

alone may not constitute an incorporeal being ] - 

assumed a special importance in scholasticism, on 

account of its intimate relation with the doctrine 

on angels. These latter superior intelligences, free 

from the imperfections of corporeal life -form an 

intermediate step between God and man in the 

hierarchy of essences. Indeed it may be said that 

scholasticism has constructed, upon the purest 

principles of intellectual and volitional activity, a 

psychology, or rather an " eidology " of angels, 

which has nothing in common with Aristotle s vague 

conjectures on the intelligences that moved the 

world s spheres. How did the philosophers of the 

thirteenth century conceive the composition and 

nature of the angels ? 

There were different theories. Although unanimous 

in ascribing to the angelic nature a composition of 

potency and act, which all regarded as the essential 

note of contingent being, they were divided upon 

the question of a real composition of matter and 

form. In opposition to the Franciscans whose views 

we have just mentioned, the Thomists asserted that 

the angels are " pure " or " separated " forms. 

And here is their reason : Since it is the form that 

actualizes the matter and gives the compound its 

1 Or even in the minds of certain scholastics of a later period 

simple corporeal beings, such as they conceived the heavenly bodies 

to be. 

104 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

perfection and not vice versa, there can be no contra 

diction in the concept of forms subsisting apart from 

any union whatsoever with matter. Such separated 

intelligences, moreover, are not only intrinsically 

possible but also contingent and finite, for their 

essence is limited by their existence : " quia forma 

creata sic subsistens habet esse ct non est suum esse, 

necesse est quod ipsum esse sit receptum ct contractum 

ad determinatam naturam. Unde non potest esse 

infinitum simpliciter." l 

64. What we have been just saying suggests an 

examination of the functions attached to the form 

by scholasticism. Its first function in the real order 

(whether of corporeal or incorporeal being), is that 

constitutive causality which we have been explaining 

(formal cause, id per quod aUqnid fit) ; it makes the 

thing what it is (Vo n r,\ ?/i/, quod quid est) ; it 

gives the thing its natural impress, fixes its specific 

rank and its degree of perfection. Furthermore, 

it is in a special way the principle of the activity of 

the thing (natura), and the source of its faculties 

and operations. The form is also the seat of finality, 

of that objective, innate tendency which impels 

the being to realize some specific end by the exercise 

of its activities. 

From all this, it is easy to understand that the 

form is the principle of unity in a being. And parti 

cularly in corporeal being it is the form that gathers 

up into one unique subsistence the scattered elements 

of extended matter. But what exactly is the scope 

of this unitive function of the form ? Or, in other 

words, can one and the same corporeal being receive 

the intrinsic determination of more than one form ? 

The answer of St. Thomas is in the negative, and is 

therein strictly peripatetic ; we have his fundamental 

argument in these words of the Summa Theologica : 

;c Nihil est simpliciter unum, nisi per formam unam 

1 St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, la, q. 7, a. 2. 

METAPHYSICS 105 

per quam habet res esse." 1 But this solution was 

novel, for it ran counter to the teaching of Alexander 

of Hales, of St. Bona venture and of Albert the Great 

himself ; and it drew forth the most energetic protests 

from the Franciscan schools (31). Most of the 

thirteenth century scholastics and a considerable 

number of those of the fourteenth, admitted that 

the various degrees of perfection found in one and 

the same being have distinct forms corresponding 

to them, and this without detriment to the complete 

and perfect unity of the being. 

As for the matter, seeing that it is the recipient 

of all determinations, it must itself be destitute of 

all. It is the form that leavens it from within, as it 

were ; and every form is some one realization of the 

inexhaustible potentiality of the recipient. 3 

65. The multiplication of individual beings in one 

and the same species, gives rise to two problems of 

fundamental importance : the relation of the indi 

vidual to the universal, and the question of the 

principle of individuation. Now, those two problems 

were organically connected with the doctrine of the 

distinction between potency and act. 

The " universals " controversy was practically 

decided before the thirteenth century : scholasticism 

unanimously accepted the solution arrived at in the 

twelfth. " The individual is the real substance ; the 

universal derives its ultimate form from the sub 

jective work of our minds." The most subtle dialec 

ticians, not excepting Duns Scotus himself with all 

his daring differences of view, take no exception to 

those scholastic conclusions. No one, however, is 

more exact and logical in those delicate matters 

than the Angelic Doctor. It is as a tribute of homage 

to his wonderful powers of exposition, and not as 

1 ia, q. 76, a. 3, c. 

- The " matter and form " couple was of course freely transported 

from the real to the ideal order, where " formalis " is synonymous 

with " actualis," and " materialis " with " potentialis." 

106 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

crediting him with a great discovery, that posterity 

has called this moderate realism by the name of 

Thomistic realism. In an\ case, among all the 

solutions of the famous " universals " problem, it is 

the one that harmonizes best with scholastic 

philosophy. 

Appropriating a formula which was current in the 

scholastic repertory, St. Thomas sums up thus the 

relations of the individual to the universal : The 

reality of essences may be viewed in three states : ante 

rem, in re, post rem, or, in the language 1 of Aviccnna, 

ante multitudinem, in multiplicitate, post multipli- 

citatem. ] The universals ante rem are denned in the 

theory of Exemplarism with an Augustinian largeness 

of view that borders on the erroneous system of 

Avicenna. The universals in re represent the 

physical side of the problem, the theory of the mere 

subsistence of individuals with the principle of their 

individuation.* The universals post rem are the 

fruit of a subjective elaboration to which the objective 

aspects of things are subjected by the activity of 

the mind when it considers things apart from their 

individualizing conditions. Formally (formaliter) the 

universal exists only in the mind, but it has its 

foundation (fundamentaliter) in the things. 

With the exception of the " terminists " or " nomi 

nalists " of the fourteenth century, who denied the 

real validity of our universal representations, thus 

showing the first signs of the scholastic decadence, 

the scholastics generally drew a distinction, in all 

created substances, between the essential deter 

minations which reappeared identically in every 

representative of a species, and the individualizing 

1 Logic, Venice edition, 1508, fol. 12, V.A. 

- St. Thomas thus lays bare the fundamental error of exaggerated 

realism, which was completely eradicated in its extreme form : " Credidit 

(Plato) quod forma cogniti ex necessitate sit in cognoscente eo modo 

quo est in cognito, et ideo existimavit quod opporteret res intellectas 

hoc modo in seipsis subsistere, scilicet immaterialiter et immobiliter." 

Summa Theol., ia, q. 84, art. i. 

METAPHYSICS 107 

determinations which distinguished each representa 

tive from every other within the species. The 

former are to the latter as the deter minable is to 

the determinant, as potency is to act. What is the 

distinction between them ? In the view of St. 

Thomas the concepts of specific essence and of 

individual essence correspond to different constitutive 

realities in the individual thing (distinctio realis). 

Others conceived the distinction as a merely 

logical one. Duns Scotus advocated the existence 

of a distinctio formalis a parte rei, as if, anterior 

to the act of thought, the object of each universal 

idea possessed a certain separate unity in the things 

themselves (a parte rei). 

66. But there arose another problem which was 

discussed with the greatest possible ardour in the 

thirteenth century : what is the principle of the 

individuation of things ? In other words, if we are 

to reconcile the stability and abiding identity of 

essences with the endless diversity and wonderful 

variety of their individual realizations in nature, 

whence or how does it come that there are innumer 

able individuals in one and the same species ? Here 

we have a scholastic controversy par excellence, for 

it presupposes, at least in a certain measure, the 

peripatetic solution of the problem of the universals. 

The medieval philosophers all admitted that within 

any species the basis of individuation ought to be 

essential and intrinsic ; but difference of views arose 

as soon as the question was asked whether it is the 

matter or the form, or the union of both principles, 

that accounts for the individuation of things. 

We find the Aristotelian system in St. Thomas 

Aquinas, but so completely amplified and perfected 

that the new developments almost entirely eclipse 

the borrowed portion. Aristotle had shown why 

the form, being an indivisible principle, cannot 

multiply itself numerically ; but he had left in 

108 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

obscurity the individualizing function of the matter. 

St. Thomas explained that the individualizing prin 

ciple is not the matter in a state of absolute indeter- 

mination as unskilled or hostile interpreters of 

Thomism have often alleged, in the hope, perhaps, 

of discovering a contradiction. It is the materia 

signata, that is to say, the primary matter endowed 

with an intrinsic aptitude to occupy a definite portion 

of space. 1 

For St. Thomas, therefore, the question of indi 

vidual ion confines itself to the world of corporeal 

things. More logical even than the Stagyrite, he 

holds that in the hierarchy of separated forms each 

individual constitutes its own species." As regards 

1he heavenly bodies, composed of matter and form, 

and nevertheless each unique in its species, the 

view of St. Thomas can only be understood by 

referring it to the general principles of scholastic 

physics (78). 

Others among his contemporaries arrive at different 

conclusions. St. Bonaventure hnds the principle 

of indivi dilation in the combined action of both 

constitutive principles, matter and form ; Henry 

of Ghent, in a negative property of each substance, 

marking it off from every other substance ; Duns 

Scotus, in a positive disposition of the final form 

to assume such or such individuality, to be this thing. 

And as for the multiplication of individuals in supra- 

material species, this can have no difficulty for those 

who admit in them a physical composition of matter 

and form. 

67. A fourth sort of composition in being, not 

referred to by Aristotle, gave rise to some exceedingly 

delicate scholastic discussions : the composition of 

essence and existence. The relation of the concept 

of essence to that of existence was not called into 

1 St. Thomas, Op. IX. De Principio Individuationis. 

- Zeller. Die Philosophic der Griechcn, II., p. 239, n. 3. 

METAPHYSICS 109 

question ; nor the relation of a possible essence to 

an existing essence ; between the terms of those 

comparisons a real distinction was admitted by all. 

But we may pursue further our analysis of being, 

and enquire whether, in an actual being, its funda 

mental, constitutive reality (essentia, quod est) is one 

thing, and the actuality or act by which that reality 

exists (esse, quo est), another thing. And on this 

point opinions differed. St. Thomas advocated the 

doctrine of a real distinction : in God alone, the 

Actus Purus, are essence and existence identical ; 

in created being, on the other hand, whether spiritual 

or material, the perfection signified by the word 

" exists " is confined and circumscribed within the 

limits of the essence which it determines. : Unde 

esse earum non est absolutum sed receptum, et ideo 

limitatum et finitum ad capacitatem natura) reci- 

pientis." Essence is to existence what potency is 

to act/ But all being is actualized only in the 

measure in which it is capable of actuation ; for the 

degree of actual being is measured by its corresponding 

potentiality. Hence a contingent essence can receive 

existential actualization only within the limits of 

its contingency. 

Looking at the general structure of Thomism, we 

find this theory of the real distinction very closely 

connected with some of the most fundamental 

theses of scholasticism. Moreover, it throws into 

bold relief the contingency of the creature ; and 

above all, it safeguards unity of existence in beings 

composed of matter and form, i.e., of consubstantial, 

incomplete and mutually irreducible elements, as 

also in beings that exercise their activities by means 

of faculties really distinct from their own substance. 

Nevertheless we find among the various exponents 

1 De ente et essentia, c. 6. Cf. the unfinished opusculum De sub- 

stantiis separatis. 

2 See Cajetan s commentary on this passage. 

110 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

of scholasticism a widespread and energetic opposition 

to this particular Thomistie thesis. The whole 

Franciscan school especially denied any real com 

position of essence and existence. 

68. Another theory closely related with that of 

power and act is the theory of causes. A cause 

is whatever exerts any real and positive influence 

in bringing anything to pass. Within the cycle of 

change in the world of contingent things, all being, 

whether in its substantial constitution or in its 

accidental states, exists ht its causes or //?, potency, 

before it appears realign! or in its actual state. Its 

realization is its "passage from potency to act." But 

a thing considered in a potential state as regards any 

determination, cannot give itself that determination. 

It must receive it under the intluen.ce of some other 

being already in act. " Quidquid movetur ab alio 

movetur/ This extrinsic principle of change is 

called an efficient cause. 

Under its influence, the thing (matter) that is in 

potency to receive some perfection (form), i.e. capable 

of receiving it, does actually receive it. By their 

intimate union and intercommunication, the recipient 

subject and the communicated perfection exert a 

constitutive causality on the new being, or on its new 

state. They aie the constitutive causes, either of 

the substance of the thing itself (primary material 

cause, substantial formal cause), or of some attribute 

of the thing (secondary material cause, accidental 

formal cause). 

Finally the efficient cause is solicited by some good 

to be realized through its action (final cause), and 

develops its activity in that direction. This stimula 

tion of efficiency by an end or motive is clearly evident 

in the wonderful order and beauty of the universe. 1 

1 Beauty is the manifestation of order. Its perception occasions 

esthetic pleasure. Scholasticism, while not neglecting entirely the 

study of the beautiful, gave it only a secondary consideration. \Ve 

shall deal with it in the second part of the present work. 

THEODICY 111 

If order were a rare exception it might possibly 

be the outcome of a chance coincidence of motor 

causes. But its endurance and its universality can 

only be explained by an internal tendency which 

co-ordinates the actions of the operative causes, and 

thus secures the realization of the designs of nature. 

It is this inherent, intrinsic finality that explains 

the constant recurrence of natural phenomena and 

the preservation ot the various species, organic and 

inorganic, in the domain of physics ; the innate 

tendency of the mind towards truth, in criteriology ; 

the natural inclination of the will towards the good, 

in ethics. And so, the theorem of finality appears 

in scholasticism as the crowning and perfecting 

doctrine of the " philosophy of being." 

SECTION 13. THEODICY. 

69. The human mind can have no pretensions to 

a proper knowledge of what is beyond corporeal 

being (87, 42). Even metaphysics itself, the highest 

of all the sciences, has for its primary object the 

substances of visible nature : by mental abstraction 

it considers their being apart from matter (60). 

Still, on the other hand, the profession of an absolute 

agnosticism as regards the essentially Immaterial 

Being, the Deity, is a philosophical error ; and 

scholasticism has successfully avoided it. The very 

same mental operation which attains to being that 

is abstract negatively or by abstraction, yields at 

the same time a series of concepts which can be 

applied by analogy to being that is immaterial 

positively or of its very nature. 1 And this explains 

and justifies the title of (rational) Theology which 

we find in Aristotle (foo/.oy//^), in the Arabians and 

1 St. Thomas, In Lib. Boetii de Ivinitate, q. 5, a. i. Cf. Mercier, 

Ontologie, p. viii. 

112 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

occasionally in the scholastics, as synonymous with 

metaphysics. 

70. We find as early as Aristotle the well-known 

classification of beings into two great categories : 

on the one hand, beings partaking of a mixture of 

potency and act, beings which, before possessing a 

perfection actually, exist already in a prior state 

in which they are destitute of it : on the other hand, 

the pure act, act us purus, exempt from all potentiality, 

namely, God. The medieval doctors developed and 

improved those Aristotelian data* employing them 

in a domain unknown to Aristotle. Uniting them 

with certain theories of the Fathers of the Church, 

especially of St. Augustine, they built up a new 

theodicy which is certainly one of the finest contri 

butions of medieval thought to our intellectual 

inheritance from antiquity. The peripatetic notion 

of an immovable motor, wrapped up in inaccessible 

self -contemplation was supplanted by the theory of a 

self-existent Beiny, infinite in Its pure actuality. Apart 

from a few weaker spirits in the decadent epoch, 

the scholastics all admit that the consideration of 

the actual contingent universe can convince the 

human mind of the existence of God (a posteriori 

proofs). 

71. In like manner, it is by observing creatures 

that we can know anything about the divine essence. 

Reason tells us that all the perfections found in 

creatures must be in God also analogically and 

eminently (analogice and eminenter). Furthermore, 

the study of the divine attributes is but a series of 

corollaries from the study of His aseitu. Thus, for 

example, God is perfect science ; He is also perfect 

love contrary to what Aristotle taught ; and there 

is absolutely no doubt about His personality. 

The multiplicity of the divine perfections is 

sw r allowed up in the unity of the infinite. But 

the scholastics differ in their conceptions of the kind 

THEODICY 113 

of distinction to be admitted between those per 

fections just as on the question of their relative 

pre-eminence. St. Thomas recognises a virtual 

distinction between the divine attributes (distinctio 

rationis cum fundamento in re) ; and, true to his 

intellectualism, he emphasizes the role of the divine 

science. Others, under the lead of Duns Scotus, 

introduce here the strange distinctio formalis a parte 

rei, and attribute a preponderating importance to 

the divine will. 

72. Eegarding the relations between God and the 

world we notice still further points of difference 

between the peripatetic and the scholastic philosophy. 

The absolute subordination of the being composed 

of power and act to the being that is pure actuality, 

does away with the inexplicable dualism of finite 

and infinite, so obtrusive in Aristotle in common with 

the whole of pagan philosophy. This subordination 

is revealed in the three theories of exemplarism, 

creation and providence. 

Exemplarism. In the first place, God knows all 

things independently of their existence in time. 

Before realizing the universe He must have conceived 

the vast plan of it ; for He has done all things 

according to weight and measure. God s ideas, 

says St. Thomas, have no other reality than that of 

the divine essence itself. Since His knowledge 

exhausts the infinite comprehensi bility of His being, 

He not only knows His essence in itself (objectum 

primarium) ; He also sees the relations between it 

and creatures, its far distant imitations (objectum 

secundarium). If some scholastics have other views 

about the nature of the divine ideas, all agree that 

they are the supreme ontological foundation of 

contingent essences ; not, of course, that we know 

things in God (ontologism), but because, in a synthetic 

view of all reality from the First Cause downwards, 

we see that the attributes of all created things 

114 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

necessarily reproduce or show forth their uncreated 

exemplar. The divine ideas are at once the ultimate 

reason of the reality of things, and the final basis 

of their cognoscibility : it is on them, therefore, that 

the certitude of our knowledge must, in its ultimate 

analysis, be found to rest. In harmony with the 

doctrine of the innate tendency of the intelligence 

towards truth as the final cause of its acts (68), those 

synthetic speculations reveal the favourite attitude 

of the epistemology of the thirteenth century, and 

points to the direction in which we ought to seek 

for the two great bases of its criteriological dogmatism. 

The influence of the Augustinian rationes a ternw and 

of the Pythagorean speculations on numbers, may 

be easily detected in the theory of exemplarism. 

Creation. According to those divine ideas, the 

causo3 exemplares of the world, God produced from 

nothing, by His creative act, all contingent realities. 

Scholasticism here improved on Aristotle, not only 

by its concept of " exemplary " causality, which w;s 

incompatible with the immobility of God as con 

ceived by the peripatetics ; but also by its theory 

of efficient cause (id a quo aliguid fit). 

In Aristotle, the efficient cause should be rather 

called the motor l cause ; for efficiency, in his concept 

of it, does not regard the production of the first or 

earliest recipients or subjects of movemeDt. These 

are supposed to be eternal, as also the world which 

has resulted from their combination ; and movement 

results necessarily from their conjunction. 

In scholasticism, on the contrary, it is not merely 

the movement of things that falls under the influence 

of the divine efficient cause, but the very substance 

of those things, even in its deepest reality. Whether, 

further, we admit the necessity of a creation in time 

1 In modern scientific language a motor cause is one that produces 

local motion. It is taken here in a wider sense to designate the pro 

ductive cause of any sort of movement or change whatsoever. Cf. n. 61. 

GENERAL PHYSICS 115 

or, with St. Thomas, fail to find any evident contra 

diction in the concept oi eternal creation is a matter 

of minor importance. 

Providence. The Omnipotent Creator retains His 

sovereign power over the creature He has called 

into existence out of nothingness by the simple act 

of His all-producing will. While respecting the 

proper nature of every created being, He conserves 

its essence, co-operates with its activity (concursus 

congruens natures creaturce), and rules it by His 

Providence. He is also the final cause of the universe, 

but in a deeper sense than with Aristotle. All 

things tend towards God ; a thesis intimately con 

nected with the doctrine of the future life and 

happiness of man. 

The application of Aristotelian metaphysics to the 

study of the Divinity gives the theodicy of the 

thirteenth century a depth and richness which 

neither the Fathers of the Church nor the early 

scholastics ever saw in it. It is really one of the 

most powerful affirmations of theism the world has 

ever witnessed. The God of the scholastics is no 

anthromorphic deity, " dwelling away in the clouds," 

and keeping the world-machine in motion : pantheism 

makes merry over such fanciful imaginings, but 

these have nothing in common with the sublime 

conceptions of the thirteenth century. 

SECTION 14. GENERAL PHYSICS. 

73. The object of general physics in the ancient 

meaning of the word, is the synthetic study of the 

corporeal world. The great, striking phenomenon 

which enables the physician to rise above the endless 

details of nature, and to embrace it in one compre 

hensive view, is the movement or change of bodies. 

Metaphysics deals with movement as such (61) ; 

116 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

physics, with corporeal movements. These latter, 

as Aristotle taught, are of four kinds : the appearance 

and disappearance of substantial compounds (7=^; 

and fJopd) ; qualitative change (a/. ^iuai;) ; growth and 

decay (a-y^r,-^ and pd/ <j/ r -) ; and, finallv, local motion 

(popa), the movement par excellence, which the three 

other kinds presuppose. The concept of local motion 

occasioned controversies on time and space. 

74. The theory of substantial change gives us a 

very characteristic explanation of the evolution of 

nature. Difference of properties reveals a specific 

difference between corporeal substances. On the 

other hand, these substances change into one another 

and combine with one another to produce new com 

pounds, specifically distinct from the generating 

factors ; and these latter compounds in turn, under 

the unceasing action of surrounding agencies, are 

again resolved into their elementary constituents ; the 

abiding identity of the primary matter through all 

the varying stages of the process, together with the 

diversity of specific forms, yields an adequate 

explanation of the visible facts (65). 

In all the scholastic systems, the primary matter 

of the body is endowed wdth a fundamental relation 

to quantity. Quantity, or passive diffusion in space, 

is the first attribute of bodies, and it is regarded 

as a function of the primary matter just as the 

reduction of the corporeal elements to unity is a 

function of the form. 

The abiding identity of the primary matter does 

not offer any obstacle to its real diversification in 

the innumerable substances of the universe. To 

understand fully the mind of the scholastics on this 

subject we must remember that the transformations 

of substances follow a rhythmic gradation the 

stages of which are regulated by the finality of the 

cosmos. 

75. This theory of the rhythmic evolution of 

GENERAL PHYSICS 117 

substantial forms is beautifully developed in scholas 

ticism. Matter is, no doubt, a treasure-house of 

potentiality, a pliable thing which assumes a succes 

sion of forms throughout any given series ot 

compositions. But this plasticity has its limits ; 

it follows certain lines. Nature will not change a 

stone into a lion ; in its evolution it obeys a law of 

progress, the detailed application of which it is the 

mission of the special sciences to study, while the 

physician views it only in its generality. Or, in 

scholastic language, the primary matter is not 

deprived of one form to assume any other form 

indifferently, but only to be united to that particular 

form which corresponds with the immediately neigh 

bouring type in the natural hierarchy of things. By 

reason of a special predetermination, the different 

stages traversed by matter are thus fixed in a very 

perfect way. Hence the teaching of St. Thomas 

that, antecedent to its union with the spiritual soul, 

the human body assumes a certain number of 

intermediary forms, until nature s work has thus 

raised the embryo to a state of perfection which 

demands the supreme informing principle, the spiritual 

soul, infused by Almighty God. This is simply the 

" natura non facit saltum " expressed in philosophical 

language : a simple but striking interpretation of 

the principle of cosmic evolution. Here also we are 

led into the full meaning of the formula : corruptio 

unius est generatio alterius. 

This process productive of forms (educlio formarum 

e potentiis materice) is rightly regarded as one of the 

most difficult questions of scholasticism. Its greatest 

teachers are unanimous in admitting the intervention 

of a triple factor : the First Cause exerting the 

concur sus generalis ; the pre-existing matter disposed 

to receive the new form and give birth to the new 

compound ; the natural agent or active principle, 

which actualizes the receptive subject. But there 

118 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

is little or no agreement as to the respective role of 

each of these three factors. St. Thomas lays stress 

on the virtus activa of the natural agent, and on the 

passivity of the matter. He simply reduces the 

problem of the appearance and disappearance of 

forms to that of the actualization of a potency in a 

pre-existing subject (61). The Thomistic teaching is 

thus opposed to the more ancient theory of the 

rationes sc mined cs, defended by St. Bonaventure and 

by most of the earlier scholastics of the thirteenth 

century. The advocates of this latter cosmological 

hypothesis would maintain that Cod endowed matter 

from the beginning with certain active 1 forces which 

are the seminal principles of all things, and whose 

gradual development in the bosom of the material 

universe accounts for the appearance of the innumer 

able material substances of nature. 

76. However that may be, finality rules the 

w^hole series of substantial changes, and the universal 

order of things, just as it rules the activities of each 

individual being (68). 

With the exception of a few realists of the twelfth 

century who were led into error by the poetical 

descriptions of the Timcrus, the scholastics never 

regarded nature in the light of a real, individual, 

physical organism, after the manner of the ancients. 

As regards the ultimate term of the cosmic evolution, 

scholasticism finds an explanation, unknown to 

Aristotle, in the relation of the world to God. The 

existence of the creature can have no other end than 

the glory of its Creator. That glory finds its first 

manifestation in the contemplation of the universe 

by the Infinite Intelligence ; secondly, in the know 

ledge which other intelligent beings can acquire of 

the marvellous order of creation. Such is the eluci 

dation of an enigma which Aristotle had encountered 

without being able to offer a satisfactory solution of it : 

how is God the final cause of the material universe ? 

CELESTIAL AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS J.19 

SECTION 15. CELESTIAL AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. 

77. The spectacle of the heavens is imposing ; chiefly 

because of the unending revolutions and apparent 

immutability of the stars. Influenced by the popular 

beliefs which held the stars for divinities, Aristotle 

regarded them as more perfect substances than those 

of the earth. He set up a distinction of nature between 

the former as being exempt from the laws of change, 

and the latter as being manifestly plunged in an 

ocean of change. Medieval philosophy espoused this 

a priori principle ; and its vitiating influence is 

revealed in the three thirteenth century departments 

of special physics : physical and mechanical astro 

nomy ; the theory of sublunary matter ; and the 

action of the heavens upon terrestrial substances. 

78. The superior perfection of the starry universe 

is revealed firstly in its constitution and secondly in 

its local motion. The heavens are complete strangers 

to birth and death alike : the astral substance is 

immutable, exempt from generation and corruption. 

In philosophical language the theory runs thus : 

the heavenly bodies are indeed composed of primary 

matter and substantial form, but these two consti 

tutive elements are here indissolubty united to each 

other. 1 And as primary matter, that receptive 

subject of those original determinations, cannot 

assume a new substantial form without losing the 

one it has (corruptio unius est generatio alterius), the 

indissolubility of that union explains both the 

impossibility of all transformation and the per 

manence of the starry bodies ; that is, of the fixed 

stars and planets : for the comets, whose irregular 

motions would not fit in with the theory, were 

regarded as a sort of atmospheric will-o -the-wisps. 

1 Some scholastics, posterior to the thirteenth century, attributed 

the immutability of the stars to their supposed simplicity. 

120 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

But the scholastics did not infer the eternity of 

the stars from their immutability, as Aristotle had 

done : their teaching on this point was an application 

of their general doctrine of creation (72) ; and they 

still more emphatically repudiated the view that 

would see in the star a divinity. On the other hand, 

however, they accepted this other corollary that 

each siderial type in -unique : since the form here 

determines all the matter it is capable of informing, 

each star or heavenly body must be unique of its 

kind. 

Just as their astronomical physics were adapted 

to their general principles on the constitution of 

bodies, so also were their celestial mechanics inspired 

by a priori considerations on the perfection of circular 

movement. The only sort of change observable 

in the stars is the local displacement due to their 

revolutions. And in fact, since local motion was 

regarded by both ancient and medieval physicists 

as a necessary manifestation of all corporeal essence* , 

each specific substance should possess its own specific, 

movement : here we have the theory of natural 

movements and natural places, one of the old anti 

theses to our modern mechanics. The theory simply 

means that if a body be displaced by an efficient 

cause, it will determine and direct its movement, 

according to its nature, towards the place which is 

natural to it. 

The heavenly body, superior in its constitution 

to the earthly, has also a nobler sort of motion : 

its movement is circular. This is the most perfect 

of all motions, for the circle has neither beginning, 

middle, nor end ; it is complete in itself, without 

further addition. 

Without attempting a detailed explanation of the 

revolutions of the heavenly bodies, let us merely 

note that all the astronomical theories of the 

thirteenth century were based on the geocentric 

CELESTIAL AND TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS 121 

system of Ptolemy. The stars are fixed in concentric 

spheres whose revolution around the earth accounts 

for their diurnal motion. Bub who sets them in 

motion ? Not astral souls, as Aristotle had taught 

intelligent and divine forms, "unchangeable actualiza 

tions of the Nature-soul, identical with itself 

everywhere, yet also everywhere differentiated by 

the greater or less degree of docility of the body 

it informs " L ; but intelligent motors, as St. Thomas 

taught, extrinsically related to the spheres which 

they set in motion mechanically.* To explain the 

complex motions of the planets various hypotheses 

were put forward : homocentric cycloids, excentric 

cycloids and epicycloids. Of the planets, the moon is 

the nearest to the earth. Hence the term sublunary 

applied to earthly substances. 

79. Whilst the heavenly bodies move in a circle, 

earthly bodies move in a straight line ; and this 

is indicative of their inferiority. Fire which is 

" absolutely " light, and air which is light " rela 

tively," move naturally upwards ; earth which is 

absolutely heavy, and water which is relatively 

so, tend naturally downwards. So that each 

of the four sublunary elements possesses its own 

proper place : fire fills the upper regions ; earth 

fills the depths ; water and air come between, water 

next the earth, air next the fire. These, with the 

ether or fifth essence (quintessence), which constitutes 

the heavenly bodies, form the whole stock-in-trade 

of the medieval cosmogony. The ancients inferred 

the unity of the world from the tendency of each 

element towards its own natural place ; from the 

property of weight in the heavy elements they 

inferred the central position of our earth in the 

universe, its spherical shape and its immobility. 

1 Piat, An state (Paris, 1903), p. 129. 

2 " Ad hoc autem quod moveat, non oportet quod uniatur ei ut forma, 

sed per contactum virtutis, sicut motor unitur mobili." Summa 

Theol., I., q. 70, a. 3. 

122 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

The earthly bodies are moreover mutually opposed 

in regard to their sensible qualities : warm and cold 

(active qualities), dry and moist (passive qualities). 

As every body is both active and passive, each 

element is endowed with a combination of some two- 

qualities taken one from each pair : warm and dry 

(giving fire), warm and moist (giving air), cold and 

dry (giving earth), cold and moist (giving water). 

By reason of such oppositions the elements can be 

changed into one another ; but more especially do* 

they give rise, by chemical combination, to the 

" mixtuni " or chemical compound, which the science 

of the Middle Ages distinguished perfectly well from 

the mechanical mixture. The formation and dissolu 

tion of " mixta " explain the constant change that 

is going on in the inorganic and organic kingdoms. 

80. This incessant change implies the uninterrupted 

activity of efficient causes. And as these latter 

are arranged in hierarchical order, the efficiency of 

the earthly forces is ultimately traceable to the 

heat and other active powers of the heavenly bodies : 

on the abiding continuity of these celestial forces 

depends the continuity of all terrestrial change. 

" All multitude," says St. Thomas, " proceeds from 

unity. Now what is unchangeable or immovable 

has one sole mode of being ; while what is movable 

can have many. And hence we see that throughout 

all nature motion conies from something immovable. 

Hence, too, the more immovable a thing, the more 

is it a cause of motion. But the heavenly bodies 

are the most unchangeable of all bodies, for they are 

subject only to local motion. Therefore the manifold 

and varied motions of mundane bodies are to be 

referred to the motions of the heavenly bodies as 

to their cause." l In this view the heavens are 

1 " Cum omnis multitude ab unitate procedat, quod autem immobile 

est uno modo se habet, quod vero movetur, multiformiter, consider- 

andum est in tota natura, quod omnis motus ab immobili procedit. 

Et ideo quanto aliqua magis sunt immobilia, tanto magis sunt causa 

PSYCHOLOGY 

made the source of all terrestrial change ; they 

effectuate the union of forms with matter, and are 

thus the cause of all generation. 

This theory explains the exaggerated importance 

attached to the stars in the later Middle Ages, as 

well as the vogue of the many arts which professed 

to study their influence : magic which interrogated 

the occult powers of the heavens ; astrology which 

explored the ruling influence of the stars over human 

destinies ; alchemy which sought to supplant the 

ordinary course of terrestrial change in bodies by 

an artificial method under man s control, and so 

to direct the mysterious transforming power of the 

heavens as to make primal matter pass through all 

sublunary forms. 1 

SECTION 16. PSYCHOLOGY. 

81. According to the medieval classification of 

the sciences psychology is merely a chapter of special 

physics, although the most important chapter ; 

for man is a microcosm ; he is the central figure of 

the universe. The full development of psychology 

synchronizes with the culmination of philosophical 

culture in the thirteenth century. The fragmentary 

and imperfect treatises of earlier times give place to 

complete and comprehensive studies, published as 

separate works on psychology (22). Conformably 

with the plan usually followed in the Middle Ages r 

we may divide the problems of scholastic psychology 

eorum quae sunt mobilia. Corpora autem caelestia sunt inter alia 

corpora magis immobilia : noil enim moventur nisi motu locali, Et 

ideo motus horum inferiorum corporum, qui sunt varii et multiformes, 

reducuntur in motum corporis cselestis, sicut in causam." Summa 

Theol., la. q. 115, a. 3. 

1 The medicine taught at the time was also coloured by the theory of 

the four elements. These were supposed to be found in the body in 

the form of humours (bile, spleen, blood, black bile) whose respective 

predominance accounted for the four temperaments, and whose 

harmonious blending constituted health. 

124 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

into two groups, according as they treat of the 

nature of man, or of his activities. In the former 

group we find three leading theories : the soul is 

the substantial form of the body ; it is spiritual and 

immortal ; it is created by God. 

82. Not the soul alone, but the whole man is the 

object of scholastic psychology. Now, man is a 

substantial compound, of which the soul is the 

substantial form, and the body the primal matter. 

Thus we have the most intimate conceivable relation 

established between the two constitutive elements 

of our being ; and we have these, relations explained 

by the general theory of hylemorphism as set forth 

above (63, 64). For example, the soul gives the 

body its substantial perfection, its actual existence 

and its life 1 ; in the human nature (id quod agit) 

the soul is the formal principle (id quo agit) of all 

activities. 

This is an Aristotelian theory, and breaks with 

the earlier medieval theories which were all of a 

Platonic tendency. The pseudo-Augustinian treatise 

De Spirit u et Anima, which the twelfth century 

adopted as its manual of psychology, illustrates the 

union of body and soul by the comparison of the 

ship and the pilot, and infers the juxtaposition in 

man of two substantial beings. Alanus of Lille 

(1128-1 202) w T as a philosopher who summed up and 

systematized the intellectual work of four centuries ; 

and he represents the human soul as an independent 

substance associated to the body through a sort of 

connubium or copula maritalis, effected by the agency 

of a spiritus physicus 2 . Thirty years later these 

conceptions were supplanted by that of the peripa 

tetic anthropology which gained universal acceptance 

among scholastics from the time of Alexander of 

1 " Anima dicitur esse primum principium vitae in his qua? apud nos 

vivunt." St. Thomas, Summa Theol., la, q. 75, a. I. 

2 Baumgartner, Die Philosophic dcs Alanus de Insulis, Miinster, 

1896, pp. 1 02, and foil. 

PSYCHOLOGY 125 

Hales. The thirteenth century did indeed accept 

and hand on the theory of the spiritus pJiysicus, 

bequeathed to the Middle Ages by Greek antiquity ; 

but it did not follow Alanus of Lille by making this 

spiritus a third factor acting as connecting link 

between soul and body ; neither did it on the other 

hand identify the spiritus with the human soul, like 

Telesius and the Renaissance naturalists in their 

materialistic psychology ; but it saw in the spiritus 

an emanation from the informing principle, an 

agency which disposes the brute matter for the 

activities of organic life. 

If, however, all the great scholastics were agreed 

in explaining human nature by the hylemorphic 

theory, each of them was guided by his own meta 

physics (64) in deciding whether the spiritual soul, 

by informing the body, does or does not exclude the 

presence of other substantial forms, especially that 

of the " plastic mediator " or forma corporeitatis, in the 

compound. It was of course on this psychological 

application of the general question that the respective 

supporters of the unity and of the plurality of forms 

carried on their warmest discussions. The Thomist 

thesis finally prevailed, though the other opinion 

was never condemned ; and, indeed, if we except 

some extreme and ill-framed formulae such as that 

of Peter Olivi (Petrus Joannis Olivi), for example, 1 - 

the recognition of a plurality of forms is not regarded 

as incompatible with the fundamental principles of 

scholastic psychology and metaphysics. 

83. If scholasticism renounced Plato and St. 

Augustine in its enquiries into the composite nature 

of the human being, it availed of their assistance in 

1 Peter s teaching was, moreover, not recognised in his own order. 

Among those who disowned him was Richard of Middleton, himself 

a supporter of the plurality of forms. On Olivi and the Council of 

Vienne, see a series of articles by Pere Ehrle, in the Ar chiv. f. Litter, 

u. Kircheng. d. Mittelalters. II. and III. Cf. our Histoive de la philo 

sophic medievale, ist edit., p. 304. 

126 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

establishing the spirituality of the soul. 1 Those 

who claimed for human reason the power of demon 

strating the spirituality of the human soul and they 

were the vast majority among scholastics appealed 

by preference to its independence as regards matter 

in its highest operations. Differing from Aristotle, 

the scholastics attributed immateriality not merely 

to the active intellect or any other faculty, but to 

the very substance of the soul. And since 

immortality has no other intrinsic reason than the 

immateriality of our intellectual cognitions and 

volitions, it is not merely the active intellect in a 

state of cold and barren isolation (Aristotle) that will 

survive the body, but the whole soul in the enjoyment 

of its conscious and personal life, and in the full 

exercise of all its nobler activities. This new theory, 

put forth against the erroneous or misleading state 

ments of Aristotle, should of itself suffice to vindicate 

scholasticism from the charge of undue servility to 

tradition in the department of psychology. 

Duns Scotus, as is well known, threw doubts on 

the demonstrative force of the arguments brought 

forward by the Stagyrite in favour of the immateriality 

of our intellectual life. Those doubts were collected 

by William of Occam, and subsequently exploited 

against the scholastic system by the Averroi sfcs and 

the philosophers of the Renaissance. But it is well 

to bear in mind that the attitude of Scotus was purely 

negative ; and that his criticism was moreover not 

absolute, but merely relative to the Aristotelian 

argument. Neither Scotus nor Occam ever claimed 

to have discovered any positive reasons against the 

spirituality of the soul ; their psychological teachings 

differ essentially from the materialist views of the 

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 

1 " Animam considerando secundum se, consentiemus Platoni ; 

considerando autem secundum formarn animationis quam dat corpori, 

consentiemus Aristoteli." Albert the Great, Summa Theol., II., 348. 

PSYCHOLOGY 127 

84. St. Augustine s perplexities about the origin 

of human souls by generation or by creation had 

percolated down to the twelfth century ; but from 

the beginning of the thirteenth we find scholastics 

unanimous in teaching that the direct and continuous 

intervention of the Creator can alone bring into 

existence the human souls destined to animate the 

bodies of infants. There can be scarcely any need 

to observe that creationism has nothing in common 

with the Platonic theory of pre-existence, nor with 

the nondescript Aristotelian theory which would 

account for the origin of the human body and of the 

passive intellect by the laws of natural generation, 

while attributing an ill-defined extrinsic (MpaQev) origin 

to the active intellect. 

85. The activities of the soul can be divided into 

fundamentally different groups. The faculties from 

which they come can acquire an ever greater facility 

of action by repeated exercise ; and this abiding 

tendency to act in a given direction is called a 

habit. As to whether the faculties have a reality 

distinct from the soul, or are merely different modes 

of one and the same energy applied to different 

objects that depends on the issue of the meta 

physical discussions which determine the general 

relations of the contingent substance to its powers 

of action (62). 

Whichever opinion they espoused on this point- 

one of secondary importance in psychology the 

scholastics classified the vital functions of man into 

three groups : the lower or vegetative functions, such 

as nutrition and reproduction ; the cognitive 

functions ; and the appetitive functions. The two 

latter groups occupied most attention, as they include 

the whole psychic life proper. Then, further, the 

scholastics were true to their spiritualist principles 

in distinguishing carefully two irreducible orders of 

psychic activity, the sensible and the suprasensible ; 

128 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

so that we must recognise two orders both of know 

ledge and of appetition. 

86. A leading authority on scholastic philosophy, 

Fr. Kleutgen, S.J., 1 sums up its teaching on both 

kinds of knowledge in three general principles, which 

underlie all the ideological theories of scholasticism on 

the nature and origin of our mental representations. 

Firstly : The known object is in the knowing 

subject as a mode of being of that subject. tw Cogni- 

tum est in cognoscente secundum modum cognos- 

centis." 

Secondly : All cognition takes place after the 

manner of a representative image of the thing known 

in the knowing subject. Omnis cognitio fit 

secundum similitudinem cogniti in cognoscente." 

Thirdly : This representation is effected by the 

co-operation of the known and the knower. And 

this co-operation guarantees the real objectivity of 

our knowledge. 

87. In xcnxation, the known object is reproduced 

(psychically), in the representative act, in all its 

concrete conditions : it is a material thing existing 

at a perfectly definite time and place. We see an 

individual oak-tree, for example : it meets our gaze 

with its whole retinue of actual properties, and these 

we attribute to it and to it alone, here and now present 

at this instant of time and at this point of space. 

Hence we say that sensation seizes on its objects in 

all their individual conditions. 

And this is so in all sensation. The scholastics, 

with Aristotle, distinguish the senses into external 

and internal. The former (hearing, seeing, smell, 

taste, touch) reveal to us some external object which 

either some one of them (sensibile proprium), or many 

together (sensibile commune) perceive. The infor 

mations of the internal senses, on the other hand, 

1 Kleutgen, La philosophic scolastique (French trans, from German, 

Paris, 1868). V. I., pp. 30, and foil. 

PSYCHOLOGY 129 

come from within as the name itseli indicates. 

These are : the common sense, which makes us aware 

of our external sensations and distinguishes between 

them ; the imagination and the sense memory, which 

store up the traces of past sensations, recall and 

combine them (phantasma), and can thus contribute 

to the production of thought in the absence of an 

external object ; the vis cestimativa (instinct) in the 

animal, or vis cogitativa in man a power which, 

blindly in the former, and directed by intelligence 

in the latter, appreciates the utility or harmfulness 

of the sense properties of an object. 

The seat of sense knowledge is the organism, that 

is to say, the body " informed " by the soul. The 

Western medieval philosophers were inclined to 

emphasize unduly the physiological side of sensation. 

This was owing to the influence of a twofold current 

of Arabian thought, coming through Monte Cassino 

(in the eleventh century), and through the Arabian 

schools of Spain (in the twelfth) : an influence that 

led more than one scholastic to conclusions bordering 

on materialism. But the thirteenth century masters 

set things to rights : in addition to the physiological, 

they bring out the psychological aspect of sensation ; 

they proclaim the two phases of the total process 

to be mutually irreducible ; and they assert the 

interdependence of these phases as a fundamental law 

not only of sense life but of all perceptive and appetitive 

activities whatever. 

The study of the origin of sensation brings to light 

the causal co-operation of object and subject. Here 

the scholastics give proof of their remarkable powers 

of psychological analysis. A representative faculty 

is described as passive ; l that is to say, in order to 

1 A technical expression, often misunderstood. Froschammer, 

for example, a recent biographer of St. Thomas, failing to grasp its 

meaning, accuses the latter of making knowledge a purely passive 

phenomenon. Same error in Erdmann, Geschichte der Philosophic, 

I., p. 452 (Berlin, 1892) ; in Werner, Joannes Duns Scotus (Vienna, 

130 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

pass into a state of action and to produce that 

immanent perfection commonly called " knowing, * 

it must receive from some external source or agency 

a something to determine and complete it in its very 

being. This stimulation by the external object is 

in the nature of an initial impulse, without which 

the senses should remain in a state of perpetual 

inaction. When the disturbance from without 

reaches the passive faculty, the latter reacts, and 

this reaction completes the cognitive process. 

Impressed and expressed xpccics or image (species 

imprest* cjcprcssa}* or, to vary the phrase, repre 

sentation impressed from without and revealed or 

shown forth from within are the terms most 

commonly used to describe this double aspect of 

the one single phenomenon which is accomplished 

wholly and entirely within us. 

It is of interest to note, in this connection, the 

growth of a physical theory from this psychological 

teaching the theory of the medium. The science 

of the thirteenth century would have the external 

object act upon the sense organ nob by direct contact 

but through an intermediary. In the process of 

vision, for example, the object influences the air, 

and produces the psychic determination through its 

agency. But whether the external agent that 

immediately excites the cognitive faculty be the 

object itself, or some second factor of the physical 

order, the difficulty remains all the same : in the 

one case as in the other a material agent contributes 

to the production of a psychic phenomenon, and the 

mystery is there still. 

All the leading scholastics St. Thomas and Duns 

1881), p. 76. A passive faculty is not a non-acting faculty, but simply 

one which is passive before being operative, which must be determined 

or " informed " by something other than itself before exercising an 

activity ; in opposition to an active power which has no such need 

of any outside influence, and which passes into action as soon as the 

requisite conditions are present. 

PSYCHOLOGY 131 

Scotus, to mention no others had a full appreciation 

of this difficulty, ior they draw a sharp and clear 

distinction between the psychic immutatio wrought 

by the object in the sense, and the physical pheno 

mena which take place in the medium. We must 

regret the fact, however, that the exact bearing of 

their analysis in this matter was not fully grasped 

by many of their contemporaries ; not a few of the 

latter were led astray by the distorted interpretation 

of the " species sensibilis " to be found in so many 

of Aristotle s commentators. For these the " species " 

was not a determinant of the psychic order, an action 

excited by the object and elicited and terminated 

in the faculty ; it was rather a miniature of the 

external thing, a tiny image that traversed the 

intervening space and entered the organ, a sort of 

substitute for the reality, a proxy that established 

contact with the sense, was assimilated by the latter, 

and thus provoked conscious knowledge : an absurd 

conception entertained by certain Aristotelians of 

the time of William of Auvergne, and to which we 

shall have occasion to recur. 

88. On the object of the human intellect and its 

essential difference from the sense faculties, the 

teaching of scholasticism is peripatetic. While 

sense knowledge attains only to the particular and 

contingent (87), the intellect reaches realities whether 

substantial or accidental, by stripping them of the 

individualizing features that characterize the objects 

of sense. That is to say, the concept is abstract, 

and accordingly its object, looked at by the intellect, 

can be universalized or referred to an indefinite 

multitude of individual things. Our eyes see this 

oak, this colour ; our intellect conceives oak, colour, 

tree, being in general. 

According to St. Thomas, our cognitions are 

abstract not only when they legard the world of 

sense, which is the proper object of our intellects, 

132 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

but even when they have for object the nature of 

the soul. The existence of the ego is the only intuitive 

datum we have : this is given in every single 

conscious activity of ours, according to the expression 

of St. Augustine : ipsa (anima) cst memoria sui. 

But if the understanding conceives only the 

abstract and universal aspects of things, must we 

therefore deny it all direct knowledge of the 

individual ? St. Thomas thinks we must, and his 

conclusion is logical. And to meet the objections 

which at once arise, he grants the intellect a certain 

sort of knowledge of individual things, a knowledge 

got by a kind of reflcxio or applicatio whose nature 

is one of the obscure points of Thomism. In their 

anxiety to leave to the human intellect an immediate 

perception of the individual, the Angelic Doctor s 

rivals would not follow him in these bold deductions ; 

they preferred to introduce into their complicated 

psychologies a lot of new apparatus, not easy to 

explain or to justify. Duns Scotus, for example, 

and William of Occam, not content with the abstract 

and universal representation, which, they say, results 

from distinct knowledge, recognise in addition an 

intuitive knowledge which vaguely reveals to us the 

concrete and individual existence of things. But 

it may well be asked in what does this intuitive 

intellectual knowledge differ from sense perception ; 

and whether the distinction does not regard the 

degree of clearness rather than the nature of the 

mental process. 

We see then that abstraction remains the key 

stone of scholastic ideology. It supplies us, 

moreover, with the final solution of the criteriological 

problem, and of the time-honoured enigma of the 

universals. We have already referred to the meta 

physical aspect of the question, and to the " three 

states of the essence." There is a second formula 

which bears more directly on the psychology of the 

PSYCHOLOGY 133 

problem : The essence may be submitted to a three 

fold subjective consideration, " secundum esse in 

natura, secundum se, secundum esse in JDtellectu." 

Secundum esse in natura, it is individual ; secundum 

se, it is simply the essence of things, abstracting from 

their mental or extramental existence ; secundum 

esse in intellects,, it is universalized, conceived in 

relation with an indefinite multitude of things of 

the same species. The process of universalization, 

as such, is subjective ; it is superadded to a previous 

process of abstractive segregation, which grasps the 

objective being of things. 

89. How are those abstract and universal repre 

sentations formed in our minds ? This was another 

favourite subject of research in the thirteenth century. 

A well-known adage sums up the results : Nihil est 

in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu. This 

formula asserts the sensible origin of all our ideas, 

and the dependence of our highest intellectual 

operations on the organism. The intelligible object 

must somehow affect or determine the " passive 

faculty of the understanding." This is obviously 

essential for the genesis of all intellectual thought. 

And to bring about this determination, two things 

are absolutely necessary : the presence of a sensible 

image of some sort (phantasma), and the operation 

of a special abstractive faculty (intellectus agens). 

Nor are the scholastics less unanimous in maintaining, 

against the Arabian philosophers, that all those 

various thought -principles are within the soul, and 

that the hypothesis of an external or " separate " 

active intellect cannot be reasonably entertained. 

When, however, they approach the study of those 

principles more closely, and try to determine the 

part played by each factor in the total process by 

the active intellect, the passive intellect and the 

phantasm, respectively they espouse different and 

conflicting opinions. 

134 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

The question is a delicate one : on the one hand, 

the understanding is like a virgin page on which the 

outside world is somehow to be traced ; on the other, 

it would seem that there is nothing fit to actuate 

this understanding, since its proper object, the 

abstract and universal, does not exist as such in 

nature (65). According to St. Thomas and Duns 

Scotus, it is the sensible reality that acts on the 

passive intellect, by means of the phantasma, but 

this latter can exert a merely instrumental causality 

under the efficient influence of an immaterial faculty, 

the active or acting intellect (intellectus acjcns). 

Under the influence of this higher power, the sensible 

image, or in ultimate analysis the external object 

itself, sets the passive intellect in action (specie* 

intelligibilis impressa) : this action, which is immanent 

and representative in character, completes the 

intellectual process of abstract cognition (specie* 

intelligibilis exprewi). Here, as in the study of sense 

knowledge, we see the theory of the psychic deter 

minant supplementing the simple notion of a passive 

power. 

The " terminists ? or " Occamites " of the four 

teenth and fifteenth centuries, and at a later period, 

Malebranche, Arnauld, Reid and others, tried to 

throw ridicule on the doctrine of the species intclli- 

gibiles, regarding them as a purely fanciful apparatus 

uselessly introduced into the process of ideation. 

But curiously enough, all their polemics arise out of a 

misunderstanding of the doctrine. As a matter of 

fact, immediately after the introduction of the new 

text of Aristotle into the West, a false interpretation 

of the species intelligibilis became current an error 

analogous to that already referred to in connection 

with the species sensibilis. William of Auvergne 

(d. 1249), Bishop of Paris, one of the most renowned 

philosophers and theologians of his time, informs us 

that several of his contemporaries defended the 

PSYCHOLOGY 135 

theory of the spiritualized phantasm, or of the trans 

formation of the species sensibilis into a species 

intelligibilis, under the purifying influence of the 

intellectus agens. 1 Here the species intelligibilis 

plays the same role in the understanding as the 

species sensibilis, for it is a simple prolongation of 

the latter : a substitute for the external world, 

which comes before the faculty as before a photo 

graphic camera, acts upon it and thus enables it 

to know the external thing of which the species is a 

mere image. This is not the place to examine 

critically such an untenable hypothesis ; but we may 

remark that the supposed transformation of a material 

effect (the sense image) into an immaterial one (the 

spiritualized image), uproots the very foundations 

of scholastic spiritualism. 3 

It would be interesting to know who were those 

contemporaries of William of Auvergne who had 

the complete text of the De Anima in their hands, 

and still supported the false view of the species 

intentionalis bequeathed to them by the Arabian 

commentators of Aristotle. Their mistake was 

widespread in the Middle Ages. William, in refusing 

to accept it, gives proof of his exceptional grasp of 

the ideological problem. And when, later on, we 

find William of Occam urging difficulties against the 

doctrine of the vicarious species, we cannot blame him 

for it. But his objections do not touch the genuine 

doctrine on the species intentionalis. And the best 

proof of this is that he himself admits a determination 

of the intelligence from without, and conceives the 

genesis of our representative states in practically the 

same way at St. Thomas and Duns Scotus. 

1 Cf. Baumgartner, Die Erkenntnisslehre des Wilhelm von Auvergne 

(Miinster, 1893), pp. 49 and 67. 

2 Malebranche expresses himself as follows : " Those impressed 

species, being material and sensible, are rendered intelligible by the 

intellects agens. The species thus spiritualized are termed expressed." 

De la recherche de la verite, L. III., ch. 2. Cf. our article : De speciebus 

intentionalibus dissertatio historico-critica (Divus Thomas, Plaisance, 1897). 

136 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

90. The appetitive life is regulated by the universal 

law : Nihil volitum nisi prcecognitum. All desire or 

appetite pro-supposes a knowledge of the thing 

desired. The sense appetite is the inclination or 

tendency of the organism towards a concrete object 

presented by the senses as an individual good. The 

intensity of this inclination is the source of the sense 

passions : and these furnish a fertile field for com 

mentaries and classifications, wherein the scholastic 

genius finds free scope. 

The rational appetite or will is moved to action by 

the presentation of good in the abstract. Here, like 

wise, the mainspring of the appetitive inclination is 

the perfecting or developing of the appetitive subject 

or being: Bonum csf quod (ntnu a a f^ict^mt . According 

to St. Thomas, the action of the will is tH ccxwtrt/ 

when the latter is placed in presence of the abso 

lute good, for this fully and completely satisfies 

the appetitive faculty ; it is, however, free when 

the good presented is contingent, and accordingly 

insufficient to satisfy fully the will s capacity for 

enjoyment. But even this free choice of a particular 

good presupposes the irresistible straining of the 

rational appetite after the good in general. 

Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus and William of 

Occam take a somewhat different view of liberty 

and of our manner of exercising volitional activity, 

from that of St. Thomas. They look upon 

liberty as the primordial and essential attribute of 

volition, and ascribe to the will an absolute powder 

of self-determination ; the spontaneity of the act 

involves its liberty. In none of its volitions is the will 

necessitated by the good presented by the intellect : 

even in presence of the universal good the will pre 

serves its freedom both of exercise and of specification, 

for, says Scotus, it has the power of turning aside 

from the intellectual presentation. This absolute 

indeterminism of the will reveals the mode of action 

PSYCHOLOGY 137 

of the latter faculty : the appreciation of the value 

of a given good by the intellectual faculty, is merely 

a conditio sine qua non, but never exercises any causal 

influence proper on volition. 1 While St. Thomas 

regards the will as a passive faculty in the technical 

sense of the word, Scotus and Occam hold it to be 

purely active like the intellectus agens. 

Emphasizing those divergences between medieval 

intellectualism and voluntarism, many modern his 

torians have professed to find a proclamation of the 

primacy of the theoretical reason in the Thomist theory, 

and in the Scotist and Occamisb theories an affirmation 

of the primacy of the will. 3 And they refer, in support 

of their view, to the numerous articles in which the 

medieval doctors examine the various relations of 

co-ordination and subordination between the intel 

lectual and volitional activities in order to decide 

for the superiority of either one of these faculties 

over the other. 

But since the time of Kant, the primacy of one 

faculty over another is to be understood in a very 

special sense, and imparts to a system of philosophy 

a definite criteriological colouring, so to speak, a 

well and clearly marked attitude. 3 It is a formula 

which may not be transported into medieval philo 

sophy without changing its meaning. For those 

scholastic discussions on the primacy of the spiritual 

faculties were of very minor importance : the schol 

astics never dreamed of a " dogmatism of the practical 

[i 1 See, however, an important study on this subject by Dr. Minges, 

O.F.M., 1st Duns Scotus Indeterminist ? (Beitrage zur Geschichte der 

Philosophic des Mittelalters, Band V., Heft 4 ; Munster, 1905), in which 

the Subtle Doctor is defended against the charge of having taught 

the absolute indeterminism of the will. Cf. also, review of same work 

in the Philosophisches Yahrbuch, B. 19 (1906), H. 4, pp. 502-506. !>.] 

2 Among others, Windelband, Geschichte der Philosophic (1892). 

P- 259. 

:! Kant propounds the primacy of the will or practical reason over 

the pure or theoretical reason because the former reveals to us the 

existence of noumenal realities (liberty, immortality and God), which 

are beyond the reach of the theoretical reason and its certitude. 

138 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

reason," nor of the encroachment oi volition upon 

knowledge. Even among the medieval voluntarists, 

the adage nihil volitum nisi prcecognitum is fully 

recognised. As Henry of Ghent expresses it, the 

hierarchical relations of the will and the reason are 

analogous to those of master and servant, but it is 

none the less true that the servant goes before his 

master and bears the torch to light him on his way. 1 

SECTION 17. MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND LOGIC. 

91. The scholastics of the thirteenth century 

approached the philosophical side of moral questions : 

previously these had been studied mainly from the 

theological point of view. A system of moral 

philosophy essentially implies a theory on the end 

of man and on the human act. It is, in fact, the study 

of human acts or conduct (material object) in their 

relation to man s last end or destiny (formal object). 

The human act par excellence is the free act : this 

alone is moral or immoral. The last end oi man is 

God : to possess Him is the object of the natural 

tendencies of all our highest psychical activities. 

Aristotle knew little or nothing about the natural 

happiness of man. The scholastics on the contrary 

have proved that knowledge (visio) and love (delec- 

tatio) of the Creator constitute the most perfect 

activity of which man is capable : that the actual 

securing and enjoying of beatitude, as such, is accom 

plished by an act of knowledge (St. Thomas) or of love 

(Duns Scotus) or of both combined (St. Bonaventure). 

Accordingly, the free act which tends towards the 

possession of God will be moral, or morally good ; 

that which draws us away from Him, immoral, or 

morally evil. 

On moral obligation the scholastics propounded a 

1 Henry of Ghent, Quodl., I., 14, in fine. 

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND LOGIC 139 

theory unknown in Greek philosophy. Moral obli* 

gation has its foundation, as St. Thomas teaches, in 

the very nature of our acts ; for this nature serves 

as basis for the lex naturalis with which our 

consciences are impregnated, and from which all 

positive law derives its binding force. But ultimately 

it is to the divine order we must look for the binding 

force of all law. 

Since human nature is morally bound to tend 

towards its own good, it is likewise bound to utilize 

the means that are necessary for this purpose. We 

are led into the knowledge of these means by that 

habitus principiorum rationis practices which the 

scholastics called synderesis. Under the guidance of 

this synderesis the intellect formulates the general 

regulative principles of the moral life ; while moral 

conscience is merely the application of these universal 

principles to some particular case. 

It is interesting to remark that the constitutive 

elements of the moral goodness of an act (object, 

circumstances and end), those in virtue of which it 

tends towards its proper end, are identically the 

principles of the ontological perfection of the act. 

The degree of ontological or real perfection in an act 

is likewise the measure of its morality : a further 

example of the consistency and solidarity of the 

great leading ideas of scholasticism. 

92. The scholastics addressed themselves again, 

after the example of Aristotle, to a detailed study of 

the moral virtues, analyzing exhaustively the various 

grooves into which our moral activity runs in the 

varying circumstances of life. Their teaching on 

the nature of morality in general is followed by a 

body of doctrine dealing with the several relations, 

domestic, religious and civil, which specify our moral 

activities in the concrete. 

Private property and monogamous and indissoluble 

marriage are dictated by the natural law. Social 

140 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

life has its raison d etre in human nature itself, and 

ultimately in the will of God. For all authority is 

of divine origin. St. Thomas does nob seem to have 

troubled about the origin of authority in a society 

coming newly into being. But he does discuss the 

various forms of government in an existing state : 

and he declares them all to be legitimate so long as 

those in power govern with a. view to the common 

good. After the manner of the ancients, especially 

of Plutarch, the different classes of society are 

compared to the various members of a living body, 

but nobody ever thought of ascribing to this analogy 

the mil significance attributed to it by certain 

organicists in our own time. AVe also find in the 

social ethics of the Middle Ages some traces of the 

communal and feudal organizations of society. 1 

Finally, the thirteenth century justifies the subordi 

nation of the temporal to the spiritual power ; but 

already in the fourteenth we find certain writers 

influenced by the hostile spirit that animated the 

princes of the time against the papacy. 

93. Aristotle is the undisputed master of logic, 

and the scholastics merely comment on his teaching. 

Logic is understood to be the body of laws to which 

the mind must conform in order to acquire science. 

But what are we to understand by science ? It is 

knowing what a thing is, in a necessary and universal 

manner. Scientia est universalium. It is not con 

cerned with the individual, particularizing character 

istics of things. By scientific demonstration, and 

syllogism which is its basis, we discover the essences, 

properties and causes of things. Hence the import 

ance attached by Aristotle to those processes : they 

form the chief subject-matter of the Analytics, his 

principal logical treatise. But the investigation 

of both processes implies the preparatory study of 

1 See on this subject Max Maurenbrecher, Thomas von Aquino s 

Stellung zi<m Wirthschaftsleben seiner Zcit, I. Heft (Leipzig, 1898). 

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND LOGIC 141 

the simpler operations into which they may be 

resolved, namely, conception and judgment. 

The concept represents things to us under abstract 

and general aspects, some proper to a single species 

of things, others common to the several species of a 

common genus. Logic deals with the concept only 

in so far as it is an element of the judgment. And 

accordingly, when the scholastics transport into logic 

the categories of being, they take the latter not in 

the sense of classes of existing realities but of objective 

concepts capable of standing as predicate or subject 

in a judgment. 

Judgment or enunciation is the union of two 

concepts, of which one (the predicate) is affirmed 

or denied of the other (the subject). The De 

Inter pretatione studies the quality of judgments 

(affirmation, negation), their quantity (universality, 

particularity), and their modality (necessity, possi 

bility, contingency). 

It is the syllogism that almost monopolizes the 

attention of medieval logicians. They study at 

great length this process by which the human mind, 

while not perceiving immediately the relation between 

two concepts, the possible terms of a judgment, 

compares them successively with a third or middle 

term. The demonstrative syllogism, which alone 

leads to scientific knowledge, arranges our ideas by 

deducing the particular from the genera) ; it co 

ordinates and subordinates our mental notions 

according to their degree of universality. But 

demonstration has its limits, for the mind must stop 

at some indemonstrable first principles which it sees 

to be self-evident as soon as it has abstracted them 

from the data of sense. In like manner, definition 

(opts/tog) and division must reach a limit, for it is 

impossible to define everything, or to analyze things 

ad infinitum. 

Those sciences are deductive or rational which 

142 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

can be built up independently of experience, by the 

simple drawing out of the objective relations between 

our concepts : the mathematical sciences, for example. 

The inductive or experimental sciences are those that 

offer us an explanation of the facts of sense experience. 

The nature of the science will determine the sort of 

method to which it ought to have recourse (14). 

94. In the general economy of the scholastic 

system, logic is regarded as merely an instrument 

of knowledge, but it is very closely allied to meta 

physics and psychology. Albert the (ire at and his 

successors laid down clearly the relations of the 

science of concepts to the science of reality. For 

St. Thomas s ma.vter, logic is a xcicntia ,s y>mV///x, the 

vestibulum of philosophy : preliminary to the latter 

as drawing is to painting. Thus the golden age 

of scholasticism put an end to the absurd and ruinous 

despotism exercised by dialectics in the early Middle 

Ages. Towards the end of the twelfth century we 

find in the poetic language of Alanus of Lille the 

comparison of logic to a pale maiden, emaciated and 

exhausted by too protracted vigils. 

Unfortunately those excessive subtleties of the 

logicians were destined to reappear (96). But this 

was when scholasticism had begun to degenerate ; 

and such decays and failings as that to which we 

must presently call attention, cannot in any way 

detract from the real value of the great doctrinal 

synthesis we have been trying to outline. 

SECTION 18. CONCLUSION. 

95. After the sketches we have just given, let us 

recall for a moment the question raised above : in 

what should a real and intrinsic definition of schol 

asticism consist ? (7) It should be derived from 

within, and should give the fundamental doctrines 

CONCLUSION 143 

of the system itself. Now to get at these essential 

features we need only to take up in detail the solutions 

it offers, and to study the distinctive marks of these 

latter. Each mark will differentiate and individualize 

scholasticism in some special way ; and the whole 

collection of them will portray the essential nature 

of scholasticism (57, 58). Any one of these signs 

taken by itself may possibly be common to scholastic- 

ism and some other historical solutions ; but the 

sum-total of them taken together will be found in 

scholasticism and in it alone. 1 

The chief of those great leading features of scholas 

ticism might be indicated as follows : In the first 

place scholasticism is not a monistic system. The 

dualism of the purely actual being of the Divinity 

on the one hand, and creatures composed of act and 

power on the other, erects an impassable barrier 

against all pantheism. Moreover, the compositions 

of matter and form, of individual and universal ; 

the real distinctions between the knowing subject 

and the known object, between the substance of 

the soul in heaven and the substance of God who 

fills and satisfies its faculties : those are all doctrines 

manifestly incompatible with monism. Scholastic 

theodicy is creationist and personalist. The scholastic 

metaphysic of the contingent being is at once a 

moderate dynamism (act and power, matter and form, 

1 A point lost sight of by M. Laplasas in his criticism of our view. 

This author s pamphlet (Ensayo de una Definition de la Escolastica, 

Barcelona, 1903) reviews an article published by us in the Revue 

philosophique (June, 1902), and shows a grave want of acquaintance 

with scholastic teaching. Further, we believe M. Blanc to be wrong 

in thinking that the scholasticism common to St. Bonaventure, Scotus, 

Suarez and others, " is in no way distinct from any other Christian 

philosophy whatever, from Caro s, for example, or even from Cousin s 

in the later editions of Le Vrai, le Beau et le Bien." (Universite 

cathol., 1901, p. 114). Not to mention the fact that several theories 

of this " common scholasticism " its ideology, for example will ever 

remain irreconcilable with the corresponding theories of a Caro or a 

Cousin, the whole collection of the doctrinal characters of scholasticism 

belongs to it alone, and the accidental agreement of scholasticism and 

French eclecticism in occasional, isolated conclusions cannot destroy 

the specific oneness of the medieval system. 

144 DOCTRINAL DEFINITION 

essence and existence) and a frank avowal of in 

dividualism. This same dynamism governs the 

formation and dissolution of natural substances ; 

while from another standpoint the material world 

is interpreted by scholasticism in an evolutionist and 

finalist sense. Then, again, scholastic psychology 

is not materialist but spiritualist, not idealist or 

a priori but experimental, not subjectivist but objecti- 

vist : its very demotion of philosophy implies that 

the intellect is capable of seizing an extramental 

reality. Its logic, based on the data of psychology 

and metaphysics, advocates the use of the analytico- 

syntkctic method. Its ethical teaching derives its 

principal features from psychology : it is eudcmonist 

and libertarian. 

By varying our standpoint and examining the 

scholastic system in other ways we might hnd other 

intrinsic features for our definition. An integral 

definition would embrace them all. They are all 

connected with one another, and they all complete 

one another : and so they ought, for the different 

doctrinal departments denned by them are bound 

closely together in a compact organic unity. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM. 

SECTION 19. GENERAL CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE 

OF SCHOLASTICISM TOWARDS THE CLOSE OF 

THE MIDDLE AGES. 

96. Very much still remains to be written about 

the decline of scholasticism from the commencement 

of the fifteenth century about the causes of the 

decay, its different stages and its general significance. 

Valuable data for such a work have been already 

collected ; and these point to the conclusion that the 

decliDe in question must not be regarded as the 

death-agony of a philosophical system killed by modern 

discoveries, but rather as a very complex intellectual 

movement laden with many injurious influences quite 

other than the philosophical doctrine itself. An 

impartial study of these factors would go to show 

that the sterility of the period in question is to be 

laid at the door of the philosophers rather than of the 

philosophy. This is the first important reserve we 

are forced to make when we hear and read of the 

" end of scholasticism," and of its annihilation by 

modern ideas. And we shall try to justify this 

contention in the pages that follow. 

Yet another reserve, of a different kind, may be 

merely mentioned here ; the works of specialists 

would need to be quoted in justification of it. It is 

this : Notwithstanding the general bankruptcy of 

146 THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM 

scholasticism in the West, there was a real and pro 

found revival in Spain and Portugal during the 

sixteenth century, a return to the great, leading 

principles of scholasticism, an intellectual awakening 

which bears eloquent testimony to tlu vitality of 

its doctrines in the hands of really capable men as 

distinct from petty, unenlightened quibblers. In 

the midst of the barren wastes this branch was seen 

to blossom forth and to bear abundant fruit. There 

were certain extrinsic causes, however, which mili 

tated against the new scholasticism of such men as 

Suarez and Yasquez. Moreover, its failure to adapt 

itself to contemporary forms of thought accounts 

quite sufficiently for the ephemeral character of its 

influence. At the same time it must not be forgotten 

that the. tradition of scholasticism was never entirely 

interrupted even down through the seventeenth and 

eighteenth centuries and up to the commencement 

of the neo-scholastic revival that will be dea.lt with 

in the second part of the present volume. Kver 

and anon we see great names arise above the level 

of an almost universal mediocrity, to form occasional 

brilliant links in the long chain that connects the 

sixteenth with the twentieth centur\ . 

97. Amongst the reproaches heaped upon the 

dethroned sovereign by the philosophers of the 

Renaissance and their successors, were, first of all, 

her linguistic barbarisms and her barren and obsolete 

methods. The Latin of the fifteenth century and 

subsequent scholasticism shows a lamentable disregard 

for even moderate accuracy : and the humanists, in 

their well nigh idolatrous cult of literary elegance and 

style, laid this intolerable and most grievous fault 

at the door of the philosophy itself. The prevalent 

contempt for literary form had certainly been dis 

graceful : it extended even to ignorance of ordinary 

orthography. It was in vain that a few of the most 

enlightened members of the University of Paris 

CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE 147 

Peter D Ailly and John Gerson protested and 

pleaded for reform : the Philistine current was too 

strong to be arrested in its rapid rush to destruction ! 

Then, too, there were vexatious and inexcusable 

faults of method : the endless multiplication of 

distinctions and sub -distinctions and divisions and 

classifications, on the plea of clearness ; until finally 

all thought became mystified and muddled in an 

inextricable maze of schemes, systems and depart 

ments ! Nothing could have been better calculated 

to foment those abuses than the dialectic formalism 

that poisoned all the philosophical writings of the 

sixteenth century. This excessive hair-splitting 

tendency, already latent in the terminism of William 

of Occam (in the fourteenth century), admitted into 

logic, under the guise of purely subjective notions, 

a multitude of theories that had been ousted from 

the domain of metaphysics. And these proved a 

damnosa hereditas, introducing still further confusion 

into the already tangled discussions of the logicians. 

98. Another and more fatal influence at work was 

the widely prevalent ignorance of the real meaning 

and character of the scholastic system. They still, 

no doubt, talked and wrote of matter and form in 

the scholastic manuals of the seventeenth century, 

but they commonly compared the union of those 

two principles with that of a man and woman who 

would meet and marry, and then get divorced in 

order to contract other matrimonial alliances. 

When Malebranche and Arnauld ridiculed the 

" species intentionales ", their scoffs and sarcasms 

were justified by the fantastic notions of those 

scholastics who had inherited only a deformed 

caricature of the ideology of the thirteenth 

century (89). 

When Moliere concocted his quodlibets against 

the theory of faculties, or made fun of the " virtus 

dormitiva " of opium, his bantering sallies were not 

148 THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM 

undeserved ; for many of his contemporaries who 

stood by those scholastic formula), either gave them 

a merely verbal meaning or mistook their real 

meaning, betraying equally in both cases the sane 

and rational metaphysics of the thirteenth century 

which they thought they were defending. 

Add to all this that the leading spirits of the time 

had, for the most part, lost the habit of thinking 

for themselves : so much so that their works have 

been justly described as " commentaries on com 

mentaries. We can easily understand, therefore, 

that the scholastic manuals and compilations of the 

later Middle Ages are no better than mere counterfeits 

of the masterly productions of the philosophic thought 

of the thirteenth century. 

W). Nowhere was the culpable ignorance of the 

scholastics regarding contemporary thought so disas 

trous as in the domain of the natural sciences. Great 

discoveries were everywhere revolutionizing physical 

and mechanical astronomy, physics, chemistry and 

biology, and the mathematical sciences as well. 

The geocentric system of Ptolemy gave place to the 

heliocentric system of Copernicus ; and Galileo s 

telescope had begun to reveal the secrets of the 

heavens. But the paths of the stars careering 

through the immensities of space gave the theory 

of solid celestial spheres its death blow ; the displace 

ment of the sun-spots on the solar disc revealed a 

rotatory motion in the sun itself ; the moon displayed 

its mountains and plains. Jupiter its satellites, Venus 

its phases, Saturn its ring. In 1604, a hitherto 

unknown star w T as discovered in the sign of the 

Scorpion. Later on it was shown to evidence that 

the magnificent comet of 1618 was not an atmospheric 

will-o -the-wisp but a heavenly body moving through 

the interplanetary regions of space. Then Kepler 

formulated the laws of the elliptical motion of the 

planets, and Newton inferred from Kepler s laws the 

CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE 149 

law of universal gravitation which unified all 

astronomical phenomena. In another department, 

Torricelli invented the barometer and discovered 

the weight of the air ; heat and cold were registered 

by the thermometer not as distinct and contrary 

properties but as different degrees of one and the 

same property of matter ; light was decomposed 

and water analyzed ; Lavoisier laid the first founda 

tions of modern chemistry. At the same time 

Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz and others devoted their 

genius to mathematical researches ; and, enriched 

by their contributions, those sciences made rapid 

and giant strides. 

Man s scientific conception of the universe was 

reconstructed on altogether new lines, and many of 

the scientific theories which the medieval mind had 

incorporated in its synthetic view of the world were 

now finally and completely discredited. To mention 

only a few : There was an end of the idea that 

circular motion is the most perfect, and of the theory 

that the heavenly bodies are exempt from generation 

and corruption. If there are spots on the sun, the 

immutability of the heavenly bodies becomes a 

respectable myth. Nor were the new mechanics long 

about exploding the theory of the locus natumlis 

of bodies (15). In short, there was much that needed 

to be reconstructed or modified. 

Now, the traditional astronomical, physical and 

chemical theories were bound up with the principles 

of general metaphysics and cosmology by ties that 

were centuries old though often indeed of a frail and 

fanciful character. Were not the principles dependent 

upon the theories, and did not the overthrow of the 

ancient science involve the ruin of the ancient philo 

sophy ? Not necessarily ; and that for this reason : 

amid the debris of the demolished science there 

remained untouched quite sufficient data to support 

the constitutional doctrines of scholasticism. 

150 THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM 

It is sufficiently obvious that philosophers and 

scientists alike should have closely watched and 

studied the scientific progress of the time in order 

to be able to pronounce upon the possibility or 

impossibility of adapting the new discoveries to the 

traditional philosophy. That is certainly what the 

princes of scholasticism would have done had they 

lived at such a critical turning point in the history 

of the sciences. \Ve are aware from well-known 

and oft-quoted texts that they never meant to give 

all the scientific theories of their own time the value 

of established theses, but rather of more or less 

probable hypotheses whose disproof and rejection 

would in nowise compromise their metaphysics. 

So, for example, St. Thomas, when, speaking of the 

movements of the planets, he makes use of these 

significant words : " Licet enim talibus supposi- 

tionibus factis apparentia salvarentur, mm tamen 

oportet die ere has suppositiones esse veras, quia 

forte secundum aliquem alium modum, nondum ab 

hominibus comprehensum, apparentia circa stellas 

salvantur/ And his disciple, Giles of Lessines, 

gives frequent expression to the same view. 

But, unfortunately, the reverse of all this was what 

actually took place. The deplorable attitude of the 

seventeenth century peripatetics towards the science 

of their day was just the opposite of what it ought 

to have been. Far from courting or welcoming a 

possible alliance between their cherished philosophy 

and the new scientific discoveries they turned away 

in terror from the current theories lest they should 

be compelled to abandon their own out-of-date 

science. It is said that Melanchton and Cremonini 

refused to look at the heavens through a telescope. 

And Galileo speaks of those Aristotelians who, 

" rather than alter Aristotle s heavens in any parti 

cular, obstinately deny the reality of what is visible 

1 In Lib. II. De Coelo ct Muntlo, 1. xvii. 

CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE 151 

in the actual heavens." The Aristotelian teaching 

they regarded as a sort of monument from which not a 

single stone could be extracted without upturning the 

whole. This it is that explains the obstinacy with 

which they tried to defend the discredited astronomy 

and physics of the thirteenth century, and the 

ridiculous attitude of the " Aristotelians " in their 

widespread university controversies with the 

Cartesians. 1 Those philosophers were shortsighted ; 

they were apparently unable to distinguish the 

essential from the accessory ; they failed to realize 

the possibility of abandoning certain arbitrary appli 

cations of metaphysics in the domain of the sciences 

without abandoning the metaphysic itself. 

Is it any wonder that they drew upon themselves 

the ridicule of the scientists ? And these latter in 

turn made the scholastic philosophy responsible for 

the errors of medieval science, from which the former 

had been declared inseparable. When we remember 

that for very many scholasticism meant merely the 

old systems of astronomy and physics we can under 

stand at least to some extent why they should treat 

it with such sarcasm. They were not long about 

discrediting a system that defended such mistaken 

views. The necessity of making a clean sweep of 

the past became more and more apparent. And 

some, not satisfied with condemning all scholasticism 

en bloc, went even so far as to condemn all philosophy. 

It is from this epoch of unparalleled progress in the 

sciences of observation that we may date not only 

the sharp distinction between common and scientific 

knowledge but also the divorce of the latter from 

philosophy. The more moderate among the scien 

tists, while repudiating scholasticism with scorn, 

1 See an article of Feret, L aristotelisme et le cartesianisme dans 

I Universite de Paris an XV lie. siecle (Annales philos. chret., April, 

1903), and the interesting work of Mgr. Monchamp, Galilee et la Belgique. 

Essai historique sur les vicissitudes du systeme de Copernic en Belgique 

(Brussels, 1892). 

152 THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM 

gave their adherence to some system or other of 

modern philosophy ; for the latter had always 

professed its respect from the very commencement 

for the sensational scientific discoveries of the 

seventeenth century. 

To sum up : The contest that arose in the seven 

teenth century between the peripatetics and the 

scientists had no real bearing on the essential content 

of the scholastic teaching, but regarded mere side 

issues and secondary matters. The misunderstanding 

was indeed inevitable : it was almost if not altogether 

irremediable, and unfortunately it exists even still. 1 

The scholastics and the scientists of those days were 

both alike responsible for it : the latter would cut 

down, the powerful oak-tree of centuries on the 

pretext that it bore some rotten timber under its 

spreading foliage ; while the former stupidly con 

tended that its hoary head must not be touched at 

any cost that by stripping it of a few withered 

branches it would be deprived of its very life. 

100. Francis Bacon reproached the scholastics of 

his time with ignorance of the sciences and neglect 

of history ; and he w r as justified in doing so. " Hoc 

genus doctrina? minus same et seipsum corrumpentis 

invaluit a pud multos prsecipue ex Scholasticis, qui 

summo otio abundantes, atque ingenio acres, lectione 

autem impares, quippe quorum mentes conclussu 

essent in paucorum auctorum, praecipue Aristotelis 

dictatoris sui scriptis, non minus quam corpora 

ipsorum in ccenobiorum cellis, historiam vero et 

natures et temporis maxima ex parte ignorantes, ex 

non magno materise stamine, sed maxima spiritus, 

quasi radii, agitatione operosissimas telas, quao in 

libris eorum extant confecerunt." z 

1 According to M. Deussen, Galileo and Copernicus destroyed not 

only the old astronomy, but also, without knowing or wishing it, the 

personal God of the scholastics. Jacob Boehme (p. 20). 

- Quoted by Brucker, Historia crit, Philos., vol. III., pp. 877, 878. 

CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE 153 

The new philosophical syntheses, elaborated inde 

pendently of scholasticism and built upon Baconian 

empiricism or on Cartesian rationalism, soon directed 

their attacks against one another. The scholastics 

no longer counted for a force to be reckoned with. 

Indeed, apart from the value of their doctrines, 

what general social influence could these men hope 

to wield who closed their doors and windows against 

the outside world, and philosophized without the 

least heed or concern for the dominant ideas of their 

time ? 

101. The story of the decline of scholasticism 

would seem to point to a conclusion of considerable 

importance for all who have any interest in the new 

scholasticism of the nineteenth and twentieth cen 

turies : the corrosive action of the causes that encom 

passed the ruin of medieval scholasticism did not 

attack its great organic doctrines ; so that its vital parts 

are still sound and healthy. 

Neither barbarisms of language, nor abuses of 

method, nor faults of dialectic, disprove the sub 

stantial soundness of a philosophical system. Nor 

can the ignorance of those who make a clumsy defence 

of it in any way lessen its intrinsic value. And if 

the savants of the sixteenth century neglected to 

compare scholasticism with the rival philosophies 

that surrounded it on all sides, scholasticism is not 

entirely to blame for that negligence, nor can such 

omission raise any prejudice against the possible 

issue of a comparison which anyone is at liberty to 

institute at any time. Exactly the same holds true 

of the attitude of scholasticism at the present day 

towards the modern sciences : the question of their 

compatibility with medieval scholasticism is still 

an open question, for it has never yet been seriously 

investigated. 

We were justified, therefore, in saying that scholas 

ticism lapsed not for want of ideas but for want of 

154 THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISM 

men, and that the fact of its decay should in no way 

militate against an attempt at its revival. But if 

such an effort is to prove successful we must avoid 

what was formerly so fatal to its progress ; and thus, 

once more, we will allow the past to dictate its great 

and salutary lessons to the future. 

PART II. 

MODERN SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 

CHAPTER I. 

SOME EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS OF THE 

NEW SCHOLASTICISM. 

SECTION 20. THE WORD AND THE THING. 

102. During the last half century many a philo 

sophical system of ancient or of modern date has had 

both its matter and its form dressed up and refur 

bished, to suit the changed and changing mentality 

of the age we live in. 1 We find that convenient 

prefix, the serviceable " neo," attached to all sorts 

of titles in contemporary terminology ; and no one 

dreams of protesting against such descriptive epithets 

as Neo-Cartesianism, Neo-Spinozism, Neo-Hegelianism 

Neo-Kantism, Neo -criticism, Neo-idealism, etc. Quite 

indifferent to the master it serves, the particle some 

times even does duty for sufficiently far-fetched and 

fanciful doctrines such as that of Neo-Socratism 

to quote only one example.* Indeed the pleasure of 

creating a neologism would seem to have been the 

only excuse for inventing certain systems devoid 

of any great positive value or significance. 

Why is it then, we may ask, that the term neo- 

scholastic is regarded with such suspicion and hostility, 

1 Cf. L. Stein, Der Neo-Idealismus unserer Tags (Archiv. f. system. 

Philos., 1903, pp. 265, and foil.) 

* Cf. H. Gomperez, Grundlegung der neusokratischen Philosophic 

(Leipzig, 1897). The author informs us in the introduction that " the 

Socratic school . . . founded by Leo Haas in 1890 ... is a 

community of believers who make it their profession of faith that for 

a man of goodwill there is no evil whether in life or in death." 

158 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

although it is even " making its way out of the purely 

specialist reviews into books, periodicals and the 

ordinary currency of the Press." 1 It is simply 

because this new word, having been adopted as a 

rallying cry by the few, still remains a bugbear in 

the eyes of the many. 

In the first place, it is a scandal to all those who 

still entertain the old stock prejudices against medieval 

scholasticism, and who scorn to take it for granted 

that a prejudice must bo \\vll-founded simply because 

it can boast of a hoary antiquity. A name that 

recalls so many unpleasant old charges and con 

troversies naturally excites repugnance and distrust : 

the revival of a past so thickly strewn with errors 

would seem to bo of nocossitv a retrograde step ; 

it would be the rehabilitation of a narrowly clerical 

thought-system, manacled by the restraints of the 

Eoman Church ; it would oppose the modern spirit 

and ignore the scientific discoveries and methods of 

which our century is so justly proud. 

Secondly, the word is a stumbling-block to those 

exclusive admirers of the past who would fain amass 

all the best traditions of the Middle Ages and transmit 

that sacred deposit to posterity, unchanged and 

unchangeable ; extreme partisans of tradition, for 

whom all change seems to imply betrayal of truth 

or else doctrinal decay, and to involve in either case 

the unpardonable crime of what for want of a better 

name we will call scholastic sacrilege. So the priests 

of ancient Egypt argued when they systematically 

excluded all foreign influences from their traditional 

teaching, and symbolized its abiding and immutable 

stability in those uncanny sphynxes that defy the 

work of time with their rigid, stony stare. 

And, thirdly, the new compound grates intolerably 

1 Hubert Meuffels, A propos d un mot nouveau (La Quinzaine, 

February, 1901, p. 521). 

THE WORD AND THE THING 159 

on the ears of those lovers of fine language who show 

more concern for the sound of a word than for the 

idea that underlies it : to their delicate sensibility 

such an incongruous combination of old and new 

is little short of a positive torture. " Neo -scholas 

ticism," exclaimed one of them to us recently, " No, 

no, impossible, impossible ! " And so we find friends 

of the new movement influenced by esthetic con 

siderations of consonance to substitute the title of 

Neo-Thomism for that of Neo- scholasticism. 

Now, without defending the musical superiority 

of the word Neo -scholasticism, we prefer it, in the 

absence of a more harmonious substitute, to the 

term "Neo-Thomism." And our reason is a simple and 

intelligible one. " Neo-Thomism," or " Neo-Scotism," 

or indeed, any other title reminiscent of any one great 

medieval philosopher, labours under the obvious dis 

advantage that it likens the new philosophy too 

exclusively to the thought-system of some particular 

individual, whereas in reality this new philosophy is 

sufficiently large and comprehensive to pass beyond 

the doctrinal limitations of any individual thinker l 

and to draw its inspiration from the whole field 

of scholastic philosophy as outlined in some of the 

preceding Sections (12-17). Moreover, Neo-scholastic- 

ism is not the same as Neo-Thomism, as we shall 

show later on ; and hence the former expression 

must have our preference. The function of words 

is not to misrepresent but to express accurately the 

things they denote and that even at the expense 

of a little musical consonance. 

M. MeufMs has no hesitation in advocating this 

view of the matter in a French periodical, 3 and we 

agree with him both on his decision itself, and on 

1 From this point of view we may follow with an equal degree of 

interest the restoration of the teachings of St. Bonaventure and of 

those of , St. Thomas. See, for example, the articles of Fr. Evangelist, 

in the Etudes franciscaines (1902 and 1903). 

- La Qitinzaine, article referred to above. 

160 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

the convincing reason he gives for it : the Neo- 

scholasticism of the present day, like the scholasticism 

of the Middle Ages, is a body of doctrines, and by its 

doctrines it must be judged. Both those who anathe 

matize the Middle Ages and those who adore them, 

have to be cured of certain optical illusions before 

they can see the significance of quite a number of 

ideas that are developing under our very eyes and 

have already taken their place, among the most 

dominant factors in contemporary thought. 

103. When the father of a family dies, his children 

do not squander away his estate on the pretext 

that they can assert their own personality in the world 

only by carving out their own fortunes independently, 

or that their father s property is useless lor the needs 

of their generation. On the contrary, the son 

receives the patrimony bequeathed to him, as a 

sacred inheritance ; he regards these stored-up fruits 

of ancestral toil as a precious capital by the use of 

which he can render his own labour more productive 

than it otherwise could be. Now, the transmission 

of philosophical ideas is in many points analogous 

to the transmission of goods of fortune. Every 

epoch inherits from the preceding and bequeathes 

to the succeeding epoch. Even systems which 

react against tradition, themselves contain traditional 

elements. Without going farther back than the 

earlier of the modern philosophers men who gloried 

openly in demolishing tradition and scourging pre 

judices and preconceived ideas of all sorts even 

those have been clearly convicted, so to speak, of 

having borrowed much, perhaps unconsciously, from 

the Middle Ages ; and they have been justly likened 

by La Bruyere to ungrateful children who direct 

their first attacks against their own nurses. Nobler 

and abler men, of the stamp of Leibnitz, have 

bestowed on the worth and excellence of scholastic 

philosophy encomiums that deserve to be more widely 

THE WORD AND THE THING 161 

known. 1 It would be worth while, from a critical 

point of view, to re-edit a book published in 1766 

by an eclectic disciple of the Hanoverian philosopher, 

L. Dutens, under the curious title : Recherches sur 

Vorigine des decouvertes aUribuees aux modernes, oil 

Von demontre que nos plus celebres philosophes ont 

puise la plupart de leurs connais sauces dans les outrages 

des anciens." 1 

When the new scholastic philosophy proclaims by 

its very name its continuity with a glorious past, 

it is merely recognising this incontestable law of 

organic relationship between the doctrines of 

centuries. It does more, however. Its endeavour 

to re-establish and to plant down deeply amid the 

controversies of the twentieth century the principles 

that animated the scholasticism of the thirteenth 

is in itself an admission that philosophy cannot 

completely change from epoch to epoch ; that the 

truth of seven hundred years ago is still the truth 

of to-day ; that out and out relativism is an error : 

that down through all the oscillations of historical 

systems there is ever to be met with a philosophia 

pcrennis a sort of atmosphere of truth, pure and 

undiluted, whose bright, clear rays have lighted 

up the centuries even through the shadows of the 

darkest and gloomiest clouds. " The truth for 

which Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle sought, is 

the same as that pursued by St. Augustine and St. 

1 See, e.g. Lcttre a Wagner, Op. phil. eel. Erdniann, p. 424 ; De stil ) 

phil. Nizolii, Op. phil. p. 68 ; Theodicee, II., n. 330. Cf. Willmann, 

Gesch. d. Idealismus, Vol. II., p. 533. 

Paris, 2 vols. Among the principal works on the relations between 

modern and scholastic philosophy, we may mention Glossner, Zur 

Frage nach dem Einfiuss der Scholastik auf die tie it ere Philosophic 

(Yahrb. f. Phil. u. sp. Theol., 1899); Von Hertling, Descartes Bezie- 

hungen zur Scholastik (Sitzungsberichte d. philos.-philol. u. histor. 

Klasse d. jNIiinchen. Akad. d. Wiss, 1899) ; J. Freudenthal, Spinoza 

und die Scholastik (in Phil. Aufsatze Ed. Zeller gewidmet, Leipzig, 

1887) ; Nostitz-Rieneck, Leibniz u. die Scholastik (Philos. Yahrb., 

1894) ; Jasper, Leibniz u. die Scholastik (Diss), Leipzig, 1898 ; Rintelen, 

Lcibnizen s Beziehungen zur Scholastik (Archiv. f. Gesch. d. Philos., 

1903). 

M 

102 EXTKA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

Thomas. ... In so far as it is elaborated in 

the course of history, truth is the child of time ; 

but in so far as it embodies a content that is inde 

pendent both of time and of history, it is the child 

of eternity." For " if reason lie aught but ; , 

deceptive aspiration after the absolutely inaccessible, 

surely whatever has been brought to light. whatever 

our ancestors have unearthed and acquired in theii* 

pioneer labouix. cannot have proved entirely worth 

less to posterity. . . . Instead of eternally com 

mencing over again the solution of the great enigma 

of nature and of consciousness, would it not be wiser 

to preserve our traditional inheritance, and go on 

perfecting it ? Tan it be better to let the intelligence 

live on its own personal and ever-incipient thought 

than on the accumulated wisdom of centuries ? 

Should we not be be.tter employed in adding to that 

common fund of doctrine than in changing it every 

day in the hope of attaching our names to some 

new system ? " 3 Such is obviously the postulate 

that must be either explicitly or implicitly recog 

nised by all of us who find in scholasticism, and in 

the wealthy store of (Jreek thought assimilated by 

scholasticism, a remarkably dose approximation to 

absolute truth closer perhaps to the ideal of true 

wisdom than any of the contemporary forms of 

positivism or of Neo-Kantism. 3 

1 Willmann, op. <. /.. V. 11., p. 550. <"f. Commcr, Die 

1 hU ^i t hic (Vienna, 18 i 

2 Van Weddingcn. L I : .ncycliqite dc >. > . / i >i XIII. it hi restauration 

dc la philcscpliu chrt tici ne, 1880, pp. ,< . and 91, 

; (.i. De Wulf, A unti.oiu it ni^-scula^tiuitt : " For our part \ve believe 

that extreme evolutionism, which is losing ground every day in the 

special sciences, is an unsound hypothesis \vhen apj)lied to philosophy. 

No doubt, history shows that systems adapt themselves to their 

surroundings, and that every age has its own proper aspirations and its 

own special way of approaching problems and solutions ; but it also 

lays before us, clearly and unequivocally, the spectacle of ever-repeated 

beginnings ab initio, and of rhythmic oscillations between contrary 

poles of thought. And if Kant has found a new formula for sub- 

iectivism and the rcinc Innerliclikcit, it would be a mistake to imagine 

that he has no intellectual ancestors. Even at the l:r.->t dawn of history 

THE WORD AND THE THING 163 

At the same time, let us hasten to add, the new 

scholasticism inscribes on its programme, side by 

side with this respect for the fundamental doctrines 

of tradition, another essential principle, of equal 

importance with the first which it supplements 

and expressed with equal clearness by the name it 

has chosen for itself : the principle of adaptation to 

modern intellectual needs and conditions. The heir 

to a fortune accumulated a century ago does not 

treat it in the same way as its compiler would in his 

day. For the better employment of it he avails 

of all the advantages to be derived from new and 

improved economic surroundings. He invests his 

capital in industrial enterprises, delivering it up to 

a vast and complicated currency that has little in 

common with the simple investments through which 

it earned interest for his forefathers. So it is, too, 

with the riches of the mind. Absolute immobility 

in philosophy, no less than absolute relativism, is 

contrary both to nature and to history. It leads 

only to decay and death. Vita in motu. To have 

scholasticism rigid and inflexible, would be to give 

it its death-blow, to make of it a mere caput mortuum ; 

an interesting relic, no doubt, but only a relic, fit 

indeed to figure respectably at an international exhibi 

tion of bygone systems, but fit for nothing else. 

we find some of them, for M. Deussen has unearthed in the U panishads 

to the Veddic hymns the distinction between the noumenon and the 

phenomenon, and has been able to recognise in the theory of the 

Maya " Kants Grunddogma, so alt wie die Philosophic." 

No, it is by no means proven that all truth is relative to a given 

time or a given latitude ; nor that philosophy is the product of the 

natural and necessary evolution of purely economic forces. The 

materialist conception of history is as groundless as it is gratuitous. 

Alongside the changing elements that are peculiar to any given stage 

of development in the life of humanity, there is at every stage and in 

every system an abiding soul of truth a small fraction of that full 

and immutable truth which hovers around the mind in its highest 

flights and noblest efforts. This soul of truth it is that the new 

scholasticism hopes to find in certain fundamental doctrines of Aristotle 

and St. Thomas ; and it is precisely in order to test their value that 

they must be cast into the crucible of modern thought and confronted 

with the doctrines opposed to them." (Revue X eo-Scolastique, 1902, 

pp. 1.3 and 14.) 

16-t EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

We have been more than once accused of com 

mitting a gross anachronism : of transporting bodily 

into the twentieth century the cone-options of the 

thirteenth. ,1. Frohschammer, the not over critical 

author of a work entitled : Die Philosophic den 

Thomas ron Aquino krifixch geiviirdigt, } justifies the 

publication of his views in the following combative 

language : " In the actual circumstances," he writes, 

" we are called upon not merely to criticize a theo 

retical system but to destroy the piv.cti j;;.! influence 

which the philosophy of Thomas has acquired since 

he has been proclaimed commander-in-chief of the 

scholastic forces. The papacy, allied with Jesuitism, 

is utilizing these forces to the utmost for the purpose 

of carrying on a struggle to the death against all 

modern philosophy, all modern science and even 

against civilization itself ; and that, in order to erect 

upon their ruins the temporal supremacy of the papacy 

as well as the scholastic science and civilization 

of the Middle Ages."* (!) Professor Kucken, while 

freely admitting the historical value of Thomism, 

thinks that it has no permanent or absolute value, 

and that an attempt to rehabilitate its leading 

doctrines would be tantamount to denying the 

progress of humanity and putting a clog upon the 

wheel of time (das Rad der Weltgeschichte 

zuriickdrehen). 3 Maurenbrecher naively jokes at 

the Neo-Thomism, " which fails to see how utterly 

impossible it would be to resurrect the social organism 

of St. Thomas age." 4 And M. Secretan pronounces 

the following prejudiced and summary condemnation 

of the new movement : There can be no possible 

understanding," he writes, " between science and 

: 

1 Leipzig, iSSc), in 8vo of ^3; pp. 

- Vorrecle. p. v. 

n Thomas v. Aquino u. Kant. Ein Kampf ziveier Weltcn (Kantstudien, 

IQOI, Bd. VI., pp. ion and 18). 

* Thomas von Aquino s Stelluns; zum Wirthschaftslcben seiner Zcit 

(Leipzig, 1898), p. 50. 

THE WORD AND THE THI-NG 

school of philosophy that proclaims every question 

already settled as it turns up, or settles it then and 

there by an appeal to authority." 

Quotations might be multiplied indefinitely. But 

we may assure such writers that there is no need for 

alarm : that they have only to disillusion themselves 

and make their minds easy. The promoters of the 

new scholastic movement will have none of that 

puerile psittacism which contents itself with repeating 

lessons learned by heart ; they are quite aware that 

an archaic renaissance is not unlike a death-agony. 

From the fruitless efforts of the fifteenth century 

philosophers to revive, in their original form, 

Platonism or Aristotelianism, Stoicism or Atomism, 

history has gathered a lesson that ought to open the 

eyes of the blindest. Besides, we find that those 

who have pronounced on the meaning and scope 

of the new- scholasticism in recent years are all 

unanimous in declaring that if this philosophy con 

tains a soul of truth in it it should be able to fit in 

with all the advances made, and all the progress 

realized, since the Middle Ages, and to open wide 

its arms to all the rich fruits of modern culture. 

Talamo advocates this work of modernization. 3 

Gutberlet, the learned Fulda professor, outlines a 

similar programme in an article in the Philosophisches 

Yahrbuch, espousing the philosophical system of 

St. Thomas, in order to complete and improve and 

correct it. 3 As Dr. Ehihard of Strassburg has so 

w r ell expressed it : "St. Thomas of Aquin should be 

a beacon (Lichtthurm) to us, but not a boundary 

(Grenzstein). . . . The needs of any epoch 

are peculiar to that epoch, and will never repeat 

1 La vestauvaiion du tJiomisme (Revue philosophique, 1884, V. II., 

p. 87). 

* L Aristotelismt dc la sculastique dans I liistoirc dc la philosopJne 

(Paris, 1876), Conclusion, p. 531. 

* Die Aujgabe der chriitlichen PhilosopJiie in dcv Gegenwart (Phil. 

Yahrb., 1888, pp. 1-23.) 

106 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

themselves." Like declarations have been frequently 

repeated by the professors of the Louvain Philo 

sophical Institute, and by their official organ, the 

Rcrue Neo-Scolastique.* They have been echoed 

over and over again by Mgr. d Hulst, 3 Kanfinann, 4 

Hettinger, 5 MeuiTels, 6 Schneid, 7 etc., all of whom 

refer to the well-known advice of Leo XLII. : " We 

proclaim that every wise thought and every useful 

discovery ought to be gladly welcomed and gratefully 

received by us, whatever its origin may have been."* 

104. To sum up : The whole aim and object of the 

n \v revival of ideas to be treated in the subsequent 

pages of the present work, is just simply the realization. 

1 I >cr l\ itt>. i: ;: < / 

clilichcn i .f.t . > \-lit):*j / > .V \tzcit Stuttgart. : >o2), p. _\ _\ 

Sec especially 1894, p. : ; ; (891;, p. > , i ( > -. p. 3. . Mercier, 

/.<.<. origiiics dc la / . pp. 44" and loll. 

; M t /tin^: - i I .i ris, :;;:. 

Scliwcizcrisclic Knchctjzcit tr^ (M.uvh i4tli, : / 

* Tir>i"tl<i >(s, /)> i / /;<v/ _,vu (I rt. ihuix. 

]ip. ruJ, ami toll. Cl. / ;!)t-r i^t, : . 

fa ire P 

" " Ivi^litly un<lcr.>too(: the new ^cholastici^ir, is no mere 

re-editing, no nii-p- -y-teniatic and uncritical jn-t ilication ot <-vcry- 

thin.u that has been, riu r hth or wrongly, labelled \vith t!i" elastic title 

of Schola>tic I hiloso])hy. The new scholasticism has all that is 

be>t in medieval scholasticism, enriched and completed, moreover. 

by modern science, adapted to the needs of our times, directed in its 

tendencies by the spirit and teaching of the Papal Kncyclical. In 

other wonU : tiie aim and object of the new scholasticism i> ever to 

^o on increasing and adapting to present needs the patrimony of 

truths bequeathed to us by those who have gone before us, and 

especially by St. Thomas Aquinas." .1 f>n>pns d nii mot n<nu cr,ii, 

p. 527. [See also a series of lour articles in the Irish Ecclesiastical 

tic cord (Jan., Feb., May and June. 1905), in which we have discussed 

the scholastic view of the relations between philosophy and the sciences, 

and described how these relations are realized in practice in the teaching 

of the Philosophical Institute of the Catholic University of Louvain. 

Cf. Appendix, infra. TV.] 

Die PhiliiS tp/iic d. Id. 7 /: >;nas und iJirc Bedeutung fiirdic Gegenwart 

(Wurzburg, 1881), p. 74. 

* Encyclical Actcrm Pair is. Pica vet, who is no scholastic, makes 

this candid plea for the new movement : " Why, if there be a new 

Cartesianism, a new Leibnitzianism, a new Kantism, should there 

not be also a new Thorn ism ? We think we have shown clearly enough 

that the millions of Catholics who with Leo XIII. proclaim their 

allegiance to Thomism, have not the slightest intention to become 

mere echoes of the thirteenth century, nor to leave out of account, in 

constructing their systems, the researches and discoveries of modern 

science." (Rci iie philos., 1893, vol. 35, p. 395.) 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND PROPAGANDISE! 167 

of that characteristic and perfectly justifiable union 

of a borrowed element the traditional scholasticism 

with a new and original element. Just as in the 

Middle Ages scholasticism grew and developed from 

its own inner vital principle, after assimilating Greek 

and Patristic ideas, so will the new scholasticism 

be animated by its own proper spirit all the while 

that it feeds on medieval ideas in the full light of 

the twentieth century. And what are the factors 

of this new spirit, or how far is the new scholasticism 

likely to modify the old ? We shall try to outline 

an answer to these questions in the paragraphs that 

follow. By keeping to the order of Part I. we shall 

be able to compare the past with the present, and 

so to meet all the questions of more particular interest 

in the study of contemporary scholasticism. This 

first chapter deals mainly with the external 

relations (6) of the new scholasticism (Sections 

20-24). The second will treat of the doctrine itself 

(Sections 25-33). 

SECTION 21. MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND 

PROPAGANDISM. 

105. Is the new scholasticism the " child of the 

schools " ? Just as much as, but no more than, 

positivism or Kantism or pantheism or the philosophy 

of immanence. It is propagated by teaching, but 

also by all the manifold forms of modern printing : 

books, pamphlets, reviews, even newspapers have 

helped to spread its doctrines. Quite a large biblio 

graphy of the new scholasticism has grown up within 

the past two decades. 

A person would certainly provoke a smile at the 

present day, if, under pretext of reviving the past, 

he tried to propagate his ideas through the sole 

medium of manuscripts, refusing to have anything 

108 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL .NOTIONS 

whatever to do with the printing-press. The most 

extreme reactionaries would scarcely venture to push 

absurdity so far. Neither would they venture to 

rehabilitate the ancient f/ icium and quadrivium 

(1() and 17), nor to put into force once more in our 

modern universities the edict issued in liMf) by the 

faculty of arts in Paris (48). .Moreover, the historical 

continuity of teaching methods has been completely 

interrupted. Far-reaching innovations have been 

introduced. And these in a certain measure reflect 

the progress of the doctrines themselves conveyed 

by them. 

The commentary, which formed the chief vehicle 

of instruction in the thirteenth century (17). has 

been long since abandoned in favour of a systematic 

exposition of the various branches of philosophy. 

The latter method is much better calculated to give 

the student a unified view of all philosophy, while 

at the same time it prevents useless repetitions. 

!t also makes it easier for us to enrich the new scholas 

ticism with doctrines borrowed from other systems 

whenever that may be necessary, as well as to make 

better use of the findings of the various special 

sciences. AVe could count on our fingers those who 

would limit the work of restoration to a simple 

exposition of the philosophy of St. Thomas w> in all 

its fulness and in the order he himself followed." 

In the opinion of Fr. Janvier, any other method than 

the latter would be a misguided advocacy of Thomism. 

The most enlightened and right-minded scholastics," 

he writes, " took the Encyclical of Leo XIII literally, 

and proceeded to expound the whole teaching of 

St. Thomas following both the method and the style 

of the Angelic Doctor himself." 1 But Fr. Janvier s 

expression of opinion called forth numerous protests, 

even unexpected protests ; and w r e have every reason 

to be glad that it did so. 

1 L actiun intcllcctMcllc ft pi li iquc dc 7-<< n A 7/7 (Paris, 1902), p. .49. 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND PROPAGANDISE! 169 

At the same time the commentary will still prove 

useful, whether for the thorough investigation of 

special questions in which the explanation of isolated 

texts could easily be of the greatest importance, or 

in the more advanced studies for the doctorate when 

an exhaustive analysis of some Aristotelian or schol 

astic treatise is prescribed. This, in fact, is the 

method of teaching followed in most of our modern 

universities, and it shows excellent results. The 

formal setting of a question by the application of 

the well-known triple process " Videtur quod Sed 

contra Respondeo dicendum," as also the use of the 

syllogism, are too valuable as didactic methods to 

allow them to lapse, or to deprive the new scholas 

ticism of their services (19, 20). But the continuance 

of such methods does not exclude their adaptation 

to the modern mind. Nothing can redeem the 

monotony of dissecting human thought after a stereo 

typed method, and by a constant repetition of the 

-same rigid formulae. The inevitable outcome of 

such a system is an arid and barren formalism that 

provokes weariness if not disgust. The exposition 

of reasons for and against, the answering of objections, 

the vigorous syllogistic demonstrations : all these 

processes gain immensely in attractiveness, without 

losing a particle of their force, when they are stripped 

of their medieval garments and presented to the 

twentieth century in a somewhat more modern dress. 

The matter is simply beyond discussion so far as 

works in philosophy are concerned ; the idea of 

writing a treatise on criteriology or a book on con 

temporary psychology, after the manner and style 

of the Summce Theological or the Quodlibcta, would be 

simply barbarous. 

And so, too, of oral teaching. That students 

should be taught by means of discussions and practical 

exercises to put an argument " in form " and to 

answer it ; that they should learn, by the searching 

170 EXTRA-DOC TKIXAL NOTION S 

application of distinction and sub-distinction, to 

detect the latent vice or weakness of a doctrine : 

by all means ; that is most essential. But let them 

learn also to despise mere sophistry and to avoid 

the intolerable abuse of juggling and trifling with 

formula^ (Section 33). Let them learn to grapple 

with reality and to shake, off the. delusion that all 

knowledge is crystallized in the phrases of their daily 

lessons. 

10(). There are, besides, certain new didactic 

methods \\hicli custom has universally established 

in other domains : it would be very unwise not to 

employ those methods, which are the fruits of modern 

progress, for the benefit of the new scholasticism. 

The thirteenth century had thoroughly organized and 

availed of public discussion ; this is supplemented 

nowadays by the monograph and the dissertation, at 

certain stages of the student s course. For the 

latter, by putting his hand to such work, learns to 

think for himself and to express his thoughts. 

Above all, our teaching methods would profit 

immensely by the introduction and use of Idboraloric* 

and of what the (Germans call the Seminar, or class 

for practical tuition. 

The idea of a "laboratory" in connection with 

the teaching of philosophy may possibly provoke 

a smile. Nevertheless, alongside the libraries and 

reading rooms, which might be called the laboratories 

of the speculative departments of philosophy, there 

is really a place and a demand for experimental 

science laboratories (psycho-physiology, physics, 

chemistry) once you admit that the new scholas 

ticism ought to refresh and reanimate itself by 

contact with the experimental and rational sciences 

(Section 24). 

The " practical seminary " where a small circle 

of students devote themselves, with the help and 

direction of their professor, to the study of some 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND PROPAGANDISM 171 

special question can be employed with profit in 

all departments of philosophy : its good results have 

been everywhere in evidence. In work of this kind, 

where each contributes his share to the achievement 

of some common purpose, each will have the benefit 

of the others researches ; the right methods of 

investigation and the proper use of instruments and 

means of research will be learned by actual practice ; 

the student will be brought into contact with the 

constructive or inventive methods in use in the various 

branches of his studies ; and in this way his tastes 

will often be fostered for some particular line of 

work, and his intellectual vocation often definitely 

decided by some success that may have crowned his 

initial efforts. 

107. In regard to teaching methods there is a final 

question which divides even the most sincere and 

well-meaning among scholastics : in what language 

should the new scholasticism be taught ? Must w r e 

retain the philosophical Latin of the Middle Ages, 

the language of the great scholastics themselves 

whose deep and wholesome doctrines we would fain 

perpetuate ? Or should we boldly translate into the 

living languages the exact and delicate formulae 

which make the scholastic idiom unintelligible except 

to the initiated ? 

The sermons of Master Eckhart (circa, 1260-1327), 

who, with all his peculiar views, was really a schol 

astic, may be regarded as the first beginnings of a 

German literature ; and, in common with the works 

of Raymond Lully, they are among the earliest 

applications of a living language to philosophy. But 

for long after their time Latin remained the common 

language of all educated people in the West. Then 

the Humanism of the Renaissance came along and 

gave it a new lease of life which lasted for two 

centuries. The philosophy of the fifteenth century 

became the battle-ground of two kinds of latinity : 

172 EXTRA-DOCTUINAL NOTIONS 

the scholastic Latin which became more and more 

barbarous, corrupted as it was by the decay of the 

doctrine itself (except in the Spanish and Portuguese 

authors of the sixteenth century), and the classical 

Latin, cultivated for its own sake by a group of 

writers less concerned for the thought itself than for 

the expression of it. The earliest of the " modern 

philosophers, Descartes, Bacon and Leibnitz, wrote 

partly in Latin and partly in their vernacular ; but 

in the eighteenth century the various vernaculars 

almost universally supplanted their common rival. 

The nineteenth century confirmed the modern usage : 

at the present day very little philosophy is written 

in Latin, and the speaking of it in Latin is practically 

confined to the public displays of defending theses 

for academic degrees. 

10S. As an exception to this general movement 

we must recognise the existence of a large and in 

fluential group of scholastics who boldly undertook 

the revival of the medieval doctrines in the second 

half of the century just elapsed, and whose vigorous 

propaganda has certainly contributed much to the 

restoration which has now become so widespread. 

Their example has been followed by most professors oi 

scholastic philosophy especially in the ecclesiastical 

seminaries and colleges where special reasons, the 

force of which we freely recognise, oblige the students 

to familiarize themselves with the official language 

of the Church. 

Apart from those considerations of tradition and 

ecclesiastical discipline which we do not wish to mix up 

with this dispute, 1 the reasons which the "latinists" 

1 The question has been discussed front this point of view by M. 

Meuffels in the Revue N eo-Scolastique of February and November, 

1905 ; and by Hogan in his Clerical Studies. The same aspect of 

it has also been dealt with by Count Domet de Vorges in the Revue 

N eo-Scolastique, 1903, p. 253. See also: Kihn, Encyclopedic u. 

Methodolos>ic der Theologie (Fribourg, 1892), pp. 95-99, and Mgr. Latty, 

De I usage de la langite latino dans l cnseign:ment de la thiologic (Chalons, 

1003). 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND FROPAGANDISM 173 

bring forward are mainly drawn from the pedagogic 

excellence of the Latin language in the matter of 

scholasticism : this philosophy, they tell us, is so 

closely bound up with the phrases and formulae, 

the expressions and idiom, in which it was embodied 

in the Middle Ages, that these are practically in 

separable from the doctrine itself. From which 

they infer that we must continue to teach and to 

write scholastic philosophy in the twentieth century 

in the self-same Latin which was its natural vehicle 

in the thirteenth. 

To that which is their main argument, they add 

this other consideration : that the propagation of 

the doctrine itself will be helped on by the employ 

ment of one common " language of learning," which, 

being intelligible to all, will surmount the obstacles 

arising from differences of race and country, and 

facilitate intellectual intercourse between all who 

take part in the common work of scholastic recon 

struction. 

In theory, no one has ever denied the very great 

value of Latin, as a historical fact, in scholastic 

pedagogy ; and the employment of that language, 

were it accepted by all, would probably render as 

much service in the twentieth century as it rendered 

in the thirteenth. But the question, formulated 

in such terms as these, belongs to the abstract and 

ideal order ; and it might have quite another solution 

were it made concrete and practical. And as a 

matter of fact the supporters of vernacular teaching 

insist that the new scholasticism must take into 

account the age and the surroundings in which it 

has to live and to assert itself, and, above all, the 

intellectual atmosphere breathed by the learned men 

of our time an atmosphere which is the outcome 

of certain factors peculiar to modern life. To ignore 

all these considerations would be simply to work not 

for our contemporaries but for the vanished figures 

174 EXTRA-UOCTUIXAL NOTIONS 

of history ; it would be sowing the living word in 

the desert. Hut the moment we take these new 

dements into consideration the whole pedagogical 

problem of the language of philosophy assumes a 

totally different aspect. 

In the first place, this at all events is clear, that if 

we take the latinists contention in the exclusive 

<ense of denying the yw.sW/> ////// of teaching scholastic 

philosophy in any modern language, the contention 

is certainly extreme and unjustifiable. It rests on 

a confusion of ideas. Seeing that the scholastics 

have written in Latin, of course 1 an intimate acquaint 

ance with their latinity is an essential condition for 

understanding their doctrine or encompassing its 

revival just as one must understand Sanscrit or 

(Jreek in order to speak with authority on the Tpani- 

shads or on Aristotle. In fact, we must strongly 

insist on the necessity of a thorough-going scho/axtic 

philology, for it is an indispensable aid to the study 

of medieval philosophy. It is precisely for want of 

such an equipment which can be had only through 

special training and initiation that many of our 

modern historians of medieval institutions commit 

such deplorable mistakes. 1 Missing the technical 

meaning of a word or of a phrase, they credit the 

scholastics with absurd and unmeaning theories, 

and accuse them of errors for which their own 

ignorance alone is accountable. 

Therefore a thorough knowledge of scholastic 

Latin is of the first importance. But it is one thing 

to understand the language in which an author has 

written, and another thing altogether to make use 

of that same language to express that author s ideas, 

to discuss their meaning, their origin, their merits 

and their defects, with all the developments that 

such a work of exegesis implies. If a philosopher 

undertake to explain the theory of the atman or 

1 See, for example, p. 129, n. I. 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND PROPAGANDISE! 175 

of the tfor-s he should be fully conversant with the 

meaning of the Sanscrit or of the Greek term, but he 

need not necessarily write or deliver his lectures on 

those subjects in Greek or in Sanscrit. Any language 

of normal development will furnish the materials 

needed for the expression of any idea whatsoever, 

provided they are managed by skilful hands and 

suitably chosen for the ideas they are intended to 

embody. Every normal language will be found 

capable of expressing any stock of ideas. That many 

of our modern languages do combine the requisite 

conditions of richness and flexibility who will 

venture to deny ? We have a sufficient proof of it in 

one single work : Fr. Kleutgen s well-known volumes, 

which have done so much for the spread of scholastic 

ideas, were written originally in German (Vie Philo 

sophic der Vorzeit vertheidigt), 1 and afterwards 

translated into French and Italian (La philosophic 

scolastique exposee et defendue ; La filosofia antica 

csposita e difesa).* And personal experience which 

others will still confirm with theirs has amply 

proved the superiority of that work over many a 

Latin treatise, even from the simple point of view 

of doctrinal interpretation. Other examples might 

be added. In short, the facts have already proved 

that scholastic thought is by no means immovably 

embedded in its medieval setting. Latin is not a 

sort of epidermis that may not be removed without 

flaying or disfiguring the doctrine itself. Hence, 

at the very least, it cannot claim a monopoly in the 

teaching of scholastic philosophy. 

Then, furthermore, those who would support the 

strange contention that an author must be ex 

pounded in the language in which he wrote, would be 

putting the scholastics of the Middle Ages in a very 

awkward position. For the world knows that their 

1 Second edition, 2 vols. Innsbruck, 1878. 

2 Four vols., Paris, 1868-1870; five vols., Rome, 1866-1868. 

176 KXTKA-DOCTRIXAL NOTIONS 

commentaries on Aristotle are not in Greek but in 

Latin ; nay, even that they had to use Latin transla 

tions in studying Aristotle themselves : we could 

count <>n our tinkers the Western scholars who could 

read Greek between the ninth and the fourteenth 

centuries. And yet who will venture to say that 

the medieval scholastics did not thoroughly under 

stand and expound Aristotle . 

As to the advantages of having one common 

language of learning, they are too obvious to be 

disputed. But here again we arc only chasing 

shadows : contact with actual tacts will <ave. a 

O 

rude .shake to our fancies. We are not now livin^ 

O 

in the conditions that obtained in the Middle Ages. 

The modern languages have been built up slowly 

and gradually ; and they have inherited a long lease 

of life from deep and wide divergences of national 

manners and customs, ideas and traditions. More 

over there is not one of the four or five great Kuropean 

languages that has not been most successfully 

employed in the service of philosophic thought by 

men of the highest genius ; and their imitators are 

simply legion. The repeated deplorable failures 

both of individual and of organized effort to secure 

the recognition of some one common language of 

learning, should be a sufficiently clear index to the 

sort of results likely to be achieved by the promoters 

of such an utopia : especially seeing that the men who 

are trying to stem such an irresistible current must 

at the same time struggle against a multitude of other 

difficulties which have hitherto prevented sincere 

and unprejudiced minds from appreciating the real 

value of the new scholasticism. Practically it will 

come to this in the long run, or rather indeed it has 

come to this already, that we simply must familiarize 

ourselves and it is not a very difficult task with 

at least the more important of the modern languages. 

109. So far, we have been suggesting considerations 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND PROPAGANDISE! 177 

more of a defensive nature against a claim which is, 

to say the very least, exaggerated. On the other 

hand, the claim of those who support the modern 

languages gains enormously in force and persuasive 

ness, when we begin to reflect on the many serious 

disadvantages connected with the use of Latin 

nowadays in our schools. If we would secure an 

abiding vitality and influence for the new scholas 

ticism, we must force an entrance for it, at any cost, 

into those indifferent or hostile circles from which 

its very name has hitherto sufficed to exclude it. It 

is not by shutting itself up in secluded class-halls, nor 

by receiving the incense of a small coterie of select 

admirers, that modem scholasticism is to accomplish 

the important mission intended for it by those who 

are devoting their lives to its propagation. It must 

be brought into touch with the modern mind, with 

all the main currents of ideas that are shaping the 

mentality of the age we live in. We must give it 

an opportunity of stating and supporting its reasons 

and arguments, of opposing its solutions to rival 

solutions ; in a word, we must secure currency for 

it in the world of contemporary thought. 

Now, is it by the use of Latin that it is likely to 

force an entrance into those quarters from which it 

has been so long exiled ? It certainly is not. It 

will knock in vain at the library door of the Positivist 

or Neo-Kantian if it finds its way thither embodied 

in ponderous Latin volumes. It will meet with the 

reception usually accorded to inconvenient visitors. 

It will be considered an anachronism as archaic and 

out of date as the cut of its clothing and put aside 

with the simple remark that it can have no use or 

interest except for Church folk. 

So true is this that if certain modern publications 

on scholasticism have attracted attention and pro 

voked serious - and earnest discussion in quarters 

where quite other doctrines were holding undisputed 

178 EXTRA-DOCTRIXAL NOTIONS 

sway, these publications must be sought, not amongst 

learned Latin treatises, but among the works that 

breathe a modern spirit and are written in a living 

tongue. Nor would it be anything short of an 

illusion to imagine that at least those who are friends of 

the .Middle. Ages and restorers of its philosophy should 

find in Latin a special help, an additional stimulus 

to work. Here again the dead language, of another 

age is only a source of trouble and delay. Tnd I 

with the exception of a few remarkable personalities 

belonging for the most part to Roman or Italian 

centres of learning, where by force of national 

tradition the study of Latin was held in honour, 

it must be admitted that quite a multitude of philo 

sophical manuals are written in a style that is only 

very remotely reminiscent, we will not say of Cicero s 

elegant latinity, but even of the standard philosophical 

latinity of the Middle Ages. And what are we to 

say of the Latin spoken in the class-halls both by 

professors and by students ? Does it not, for the 

most part, reach the low level of what we might 

fairly describe as jargon ? Then, does anyone 

seriously believe that the beginner, while yet quite 

a stranger to the effort and the habit of philosophical 

thought, can possibly feel at ease within the cramping 

confines of an unfamiliar language ? A teacher of 

ripe experience, who has had abundant opportunities 

of judging the tree by its fruits, has spoken in the 

following terms of the difficulties of the youthful 

student : A second difficulty, of the most serious 

kind and common to all beginners, arises from the 

utter strangeness of the new field that is opened up 

to their activity. . . . All is new and difficult 

the notions, the terms, the methods and the 

language. [The student] is suddenly introduced into a 

world of abstract ideas hitherto unknown. And then, 

Latin, as a vehicle of thought, is unfamiliar to him. 

Even the old, well-known truths assume strange 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND PROPAGANDISE! 179 

and, to him, unnatural forms, whilst the terminology 

of the schools is obscure and bewildering. He is 

soon lost, as in a fog. . . . Some never emerge 

from the gloom, and even those who do always 

remember it as the most trying period of their 

intellectual formation." 1 And further on, he says : 

" It has been the experience of the writer for many 

years that, of those who have been taught philosophy, 

and especially scholastic philosophy, only in Latin, 

not more than one in half a dozen had brought away 

with him much more than a set of formulas, with 

only a very imperfect notion of their meaning, 

though not unfrequently accompanied by a strong 

determination to cling to them all, indiscriminately 

and at any cost."* 

Dr. Hogan, the late venerated president of the 

Boston Seminary, refers in those passages only to 

ecclesiastical students, who have such incentives, 

apart altogether from philosophy, to preserve and 

to utilize their store of latinity. In the case of lay 

students, therefore, who are attracted to the study 

of philosophy only by a strong, disinterested love 

for truth, and a praiseworthy ambition to explore 

the great problems of the world and of life, this 

anachronism of language becomes, unfortunately, 

a disastrous and insurmountable obstacle. Of that 

we have had sad experience in the Louvain Philo 

sophical Institute, to which the writer has the honour 

to belong. From 1895 to 1898, the courses were 

given in Latin : the experiment had practically the 

effect of an interdict ; the lay students withdrew, 

1 Hogan, Clerical Studies, pp. 64, 65. 

2 Ibid., p. 70. Similarly, Count Domet de Verges very justly 

remarks that " Oftentimes students imagine they have grasped an 

idea when they are only repeating a formula. And even professors 

are not exempt from this danger. They may think they have the 

solution of a question in certain high-sounding phrases which make 

an impression because uttered in a strange language. It has often 

occurred to us, in reading modern manuals, that the author would 

not have dared to defend his thesis in the vernacular." Revue Neo- 

Scolastique, 1903, article referred to above, p. 172. 

180 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

leaving in the class-halls only the ecclesiastics, who 

were obliged to follow the lessons. The withdrawal 

of the regulation in 1898 just saved the institution 

which had been led to the brink of ruin. 1 

It is also for reasons analogous to those that certain 

works in Latin, by men of the highest ability, have 

attained to such scanty publicity, scarcely finding 

their way beyond a quite restricted professional 

circle ; while if they had been written in a living 

language they would have undoubtedly secured a 

widespread and favourable reception. 

In philosophy, just as in every other domain of 

thought, the author or pro lessor, whether he likes 

it or not, must take account of the tastes and 

tendencies of the public ; because these are simply 

indications of the, mental attitude of a given state 

of society. The dry and stilted forms of language 

that satisfied the medieval philosophers will not be 

tolerated at the present day. The moderns have 

trained us to expect and to demand a literary clothing 

for oven the most abstract ideas the French, 

especially, who have in Descartes a master of style 

no less than a leader of thought. Unless the new 

scholasticism caters for those requirements in educated 

circles it will not be received there. Xot that we are 

to write literature instead of philosophy, but at least 

that we ought to please and respect our public by 

addressing them in language sufficiently clear and 

pure and simple to make even the most abstruse and 

abstract of our theories easily intelligible. 

For that reason, then, Latin has little chance of 

fixing the attention of the public in philosophical 

circles. There is furthermore this additional reason : 

we have a whole department of ideas in which the 

disadvantages of Latin are so manifest that even the 

most extreme " latinists " are disposed to bend their 

principles to the needs of the case : the department 

1 [Ci. Appendix, infra. 7>.] 

MEASURES FOR TEACHING AND PROPAGANDISE! 181 

of the history of philosophy, including the considera 

tion of modern scientific researches. (Sections 22 

and 24). How could we deal in Latin with Kant, 

Hegel, Spencer, Taine, Renouvier, Boutroux, "VTundt ; 

or treat of psychophysiology, sociology, etc., without 

coining a vocabulary of strange and displeasing 

neologisms ? 

110. The contradictory positions we have so far 

outlined, together with their respective lines of 

defence, will be found to involve ultimately the very 

essentials of the new scholastic programme ; for 

they spring from two widely different conceptions 

of the nature and scope of the revival in question. 

If we are simply and solely to take up and teach 

once more the scholastic synthesis of the thirteenth 

century, then indeed a dead language will best suit 

a dead system a system far removed from all the 

actual influences of the present age. But if on the 

contrary the revival of that ancient synthesis is to 

be a real revival, if we are to breathe into it a genuine 

and healthy vital energy by adapting it to our actual 

and present needs and there is absolutely no other 

way of vitalizing it then must the new scholasticism 

speak the language of the twentieth century. 

Surely, it is the latter of these two ideals we ought 

to aim at realizing ? And if so, the teaching of 

scholastic philosophy, in book and in pulpit alike, 

must be modernized. A sound philological study 

of the great authors of the thirteenth century an 

exegesis of their terminology, together with the 

reading and explanation of some texts will amply 

supply for the Latin pedagogy of the past. Those of 

us who have been led by this method into a know 

ledge of the scholastic authors we ourselves are of 

the number have only to congratulate ourselves on 

the suitability and general excellence of such a mode 

of procedure. 

182 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

SECTION 22. THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND THE 

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

111. The history of philosophy was not altogether 

unknown in the Middle Ages (21). But within the 

last fifty years history has taken such an important 

place among higher studies that we must define exactly 

the attitude of contemporary scholasticism towards 

tliis particular department of scientific research. 

Many causes have contributed to bring about 

the present-day enthusiasm for historical studies. 

There is, for example, the influence of Cousin s 

eclecticism in France, and of Hegel s idealistic 

evolutionism in Germany ; the history of philosophy 

was employed by both these writers, though in 

different ways, as an essential constituent part of 

their philosophical systems. Then also, historical 

research is in no small measure the outcome of 

that irresistible craving for knowledge which is so 

characteristic of our time, and which has been the 

mainspring of the natural, as it now is of the 

historical sciences. 

Every human fact in past history possesses its 

own proper interest ; for it may one day become an 

important item in some great work of systematiza- 

tion. And if it has any connection, remote or 

proximate, with philosophical conceptions, it may 

account more or less fully for the influence of some 

personality in the formation or filiation of systems, 

or for the effects of a certain trend of thought on a 

given state of society, and so for several other 

things. The study of the history of philosophy, like 

the study of any other science, is a department of 

the general search after truth ; and that alone is 

enough to justify its existence. Enough also to 

justify us in expecting from the historian of philosophy 

the full use of those critical methods which the second 

NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND HISTORY 183 

half of the nineteenth century has proved to be 

indispensable for the scientific study of history. 

However, this all-important role of the history 

of philosophy escaped the notice of the medieval 

scholastics. Hence the defects already referred to : 

a want of exactness in registering the historical fact 

as such, a certain carelessness in attributing an 

opinion or a text to its real author, looseness and 

consequent inaccuracy of quotation, etc. (21). At 

that time, history was regarded as serving another 

purpose : as embodying for us the soul of truth 

contained in every philosophical system ; as helping 

to refute anti-scholastic theories, and in this way 

confirming the doctrinal soundness of scholasticism 

itself. This second motive for cultivating the study 

of the history of philosophy was of the first importance 

from the medieval point of view. Moderns, on the 

other hand, regard it as of minor importance ; though, 

of course, as a matter of fact, any system of philosophy 

is bound to derive the greatest possible advantages 

from the criticism and control of an historical audit. 

This remarkable difference of standpoint between 

medievals and moderns arises rather from the mental 

attitude of the latter than from any purely historical 

cause ; most of our modern historians of philosophy 

have no philosophical convictions themselves, and 

are careful not to have any. So great is the chaos 

of modern ideas and systems that few have the 

courage to take up a definite attitude and defend it. 

The majority are reluctant to commit themselves 

to any even moderately comprehensive system, 

because the world of thought is perhaps more than 

ever a prey to contradictions ; and perhaps, too, 

because it is not always easy to square one s life 

with one s principles especially if these be of a 

dogmatic and decided character. Hence it is that 

nowadays we so commonly find an easy-going sort 

of scepticism supplanting all conviction, and that 

184 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

instead of trying to build up some system or other 

of philosophy for themselves so many are content 

with criticizing the systems of others. The modern 

attitude, therefore, on this matter, is the very 

antipodes of that of the medieval writers. This 

opposition, however, docs not spring from the nature 

of things, but rather from the mental outlook of a 

certain group of historians ; the two principal reasons 

for the study of the history of philosophy the 

reasons just referred to so far from excluding, 

actually supplement and complete, each other ; and 

both alike will have their weight with the scholastics 

of the twentieth century. 

112. For should these latter hold aloof from the 

great works of historical research that are being 

carried on in all departments of study ? Or should 

they allow the history of philosophy to be written 

without them ? They should not. If they ignored 

this important instrument of scientific progress and 

perpetuated the defects that were excusable in the 

Middle Ages, but are not so at the present day, 

they would be showing a culpable narrowmindedness 

and fostering a prejudice that might prove very 

injurious to the new scholasticism. To do good 

work in the history of philosophy, one must be a 

philosopher no less than an historian. Let modern 

scholastics, therefore, take part in this work ; let 

them step resolutely into the great movement and 

bring to light the truth at any cost. Above all, 

let there be an end, once and for all, to 

the petty and illiberal attitude shown in certain 

quarters towards historical studies. 1 Let us 

1 It will scarcely be believed that up to a few years ago no history 

of philosophy was taught at the Gregorian University. It is still a 

dead letter in multitudes of seminaries. Orti y Lara, of Madrid, 

regards the historical study of philosophy as an idle bibliomania. 

See Lutoslawski. Kant in Spairien (Kantstudien, 1897, Bd. I. pp. 

217-231). Cornokli (Ftlosofia scolastica speculativa di S. Tommaso 

d Aquino, p. 22, French edition) describes the history of modern 

philosophical systems as "the history of the intellectual aberrations 

of man . . . the pathology of human reason." Dealing with 

NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND HISTORY 185 

give up condensing the doctrines of others into a 

few syllogisms for the purpose of refuting it by 

a few distinctions. Those synoptic refutations of 

Cartesianism, 1 Positivism or Kantism, adorned with 

those despisers of history the Abbe Besse gives utterance to these 

bitter truths : " Defenders of tradition," he writes, " they have become 

its prisoners, and that not a little blindly seeking to know it only in 

its official framework. And they have scarcely a glimmer of the 

historical sense. They seem to have no idea of all that is to be gained 

by an intimate familiarity with the whole train of events and ideas 

that have accompanied each successive step in the systematization 

of thought, each new contribution to the expressive powers of language. 

Their philosophy is without either topography or chronology. It 

seems to belong to no age ; but simply to issue from the darkness of 

night and to vanish into it again." Deux centres du mouvement 

thomiste : Rome et Lonvain (Revue du Clerge francais, 1902. Reprint, 

p. 34). [Cf. Irish Ecclesiastical Record, May, 1905, Philosophy and 

the Sciences at Louvain, p. 400. Cf. Appendix, infra. Tr.] 

1 We cannot resist the temptation to quote the passage from the 

Journal d un eveque, where M. Fonsegrive, the learned editor of the 

Quinzaine, gives a brilliant pen -picture of a performance of this kind : 

" From the heights of his professorial pulpit, to an audience of some 

forty youths in soutane and seated on benches before him, a priest 

of about thirty years was expounding a Latin textbook in Latin 

and the unfortunate man, instead of endeavouring to speak the simple, 

technical Latin that would have been fairly easy to understand, was 

actually trying to improve on it, to beautify it, as he thought, by 

plentifully sprinkling it with Jam enim s and Verum eniin vero s, and 

winding up his periods with Essc vidcatur s. In fact, he was merely 

repeating less clearly the text that lay before him, without adding 

to it a single example or a single idea. Yet the pupils seem to drink 

in his words without taking a note, some of them bent conscientiously 

over their textbooks, others sitting bolt upright with their eyes fixed 

on the professor except when they stealthily cast them on ourselves. 

The subject of the lesson was the question of the Cartesian doubt ; 

and the professor followed the author through his exposition of the 

six reasons neither more nor less, for he proved even that on account 

of which the Cartesian doubt could not be accepted. Refellitur, 

refutatur Cartesius, repeated the professor again and again, apparently 

without ever dreaming of taking the trouble to point out the reasons 

that influenced Descartes to formulate his doubt in such terms, or to 

explain the role assigned by Descartes to his hyperbolic doubt in the 

process of acquiring scientific knowledge. Refellitur, refutatur Cartesius 

they did not get beyond that. The pupils went away convinced 

that Descartes whole conception of things was fundamentally unsound, 

that he was himself utterly absurd, and must have been animated with 

the most perverse and incurable antipathy towards truth. That day, 

they excommunicated Descartes for ever from the world of thought ; 

indeed their professor proceeded more by way of anathema than of 

discussion. For, discussion implies an understanding of what is 

discussed : elementary good faith demands so much : and under 

standing implies study. But this professor who had just so 

airily refuted Descartes had never read him not even the Discours 

de la methode. I saw that at once when talking to him immediately 

after class." Yves le Querdec, Journal d un cveque (Paris, 1897), 

p. I., pp. 116-118. 

186 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

a goodly number of uncomplimentary epithets, only 

reveal the ignorance of the pseudo-critics. We know 

of a certain treatise on Theodicy in which Fichte 

is accused of claiming for man the power of creating 

(lo, I as a " thing-in-Himself," whereas according 

to the Wissenschaftslehre the non-ego is evidently 

produced not as a thing-in-itself," but merely as 

a representation ! 

It is only fair, however, not to make the picture 

unduly dark. We gladly and respectfully recognise 

the existence of an important and growing group of 

scholastics who are thoroughly devoted to historical 

studies Baurnker. Khrle, Denine, Willmann, Man- 

donnet, Domet de Yorges, and many others besides, 

have completely broken with the old, cramping 

conditions. 

113. Moreover, it can be scarcely necessary to 

remind the reader that the study of the history of 

philosophy is in perfect accord with the spirit of 

scholasticism. If devotion to historical fact is its 

own justification, it also furnishes those who believe 

in the possibility of certitude, with the additional 

doctrinal advantages which recommended it to the 

ancients. Greek philosophy had in a manner 

evolved, by a gradual process, all the main solutions 

of the great philosophical problems ; and its influence 

was profoundly felt by medieval scholasticism. It 

must be of the greatest importance, therefore, to be 

able to recognise and appreciate the peculiar and 

specific manner in which the genius of the Greeks 

conceived the various theories and arguments put 

forth by them : to trace through all their eddying 

currents and cross-currents the development of those 

great ideas that were destined to live on amid all 

change, to survive all decay, and to vitalize philo 

sophy for the Fathers of the Church, for the medieval 

scholastics and for the founders and exponents 

of modern systems. 

NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND HISTORY 187 

The history of medieval philosophy has a special 

interest for those of us who aim at expounding,, 

perfecting and popularizing its principal system 

scholasticism. It trains us to discriminate between 

what is essential and what is merely accessory in the 

latter ; it teaches us as nothing else can that 

principles whose truth is abiding and perennial, can 

be applied to the new data of the twentieth century no 

less successfully than they were applied to those of 

the Middle Ages. The various polemics and contro 

versies of the medieval scholastics lose most if not all 

their meaning when taken out of their historical 

setting r 1 those problems have developed from epoch 

to epoch ; and their very evolutions are a proof 

that scholasticism has steadily moved with the march 

of thought, however slow may have been the stages 

of its progress. Finally, those historical studies 

bring to light the mistakes of the scholastics, their 

doctrinal errors and the consequences they suffered 

from them. What an education for those who are 

wise enough to profit by the salutary lessons drawn 

from the experience of centuries !* 

1 In St. Thomas psychology there is an argument for the immor 

tality of the soul, which is unintelligible except in the light of the 

historical development of ideas in the Middle Ages. The Angelic 

Doctor asserts the principle that the more the soul is liberated from 

corporeal conditions and limitations the more capable it becomes of those 

noblest speculations which are the glory and the pride of humanity ; 

and he accordingly concludes that its complete separation from the 

body cannot possibly be a cause or occasion of its annihilation. Such 

an argument is entirely out of joint with the Thomistic theory of the 

-natural -union between soul and body. But it rinds its explanation 

in the fact that certain Neo-Platonic and Augustinian ideas had 

percolated here and there into medieval scholasticism : it is based on 

some of these foreign elements. Elsewhere, too, with history in hand, 

it would be easy to point out that theories like divine exemplarism 

in ontology, and arguments like that from the incommutabilia vera 

in natural theology, though accepted by Roman authors and regarded 

by them as the purest Thomism, were never really accepted by St, 

Thomas in the form in which they are usually presented. Those 

authors are Thomist in intention, but anti-Thomist in reality owing to 

their neglect of history. See further examples in Besse, op. cit., p. 35. 

* The historical exploration of the Middle Ages is, moreover, one 

of the forms, or, at the very least, an important index, of the con 

temporary return to scholasticism. See the general outline of those 

researches given above, pp. 6 and 7. 

188 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

111 the last place, modern and contemporary 

philosophy should have a liberal share of attention 

in those historical studies, for this philosophy is the 

very soul of the intellectual civilization in which 

the new scholasticism in fighting for a place. This 

contest and competition of systems is both inevitable 

and all-important. Unless the new scholasticism 

were determined to keep closely in touch with living, 

actual thought, why should it bo of the twentieth 

century any more than of the thirteenth ? Or how 

could it hope to flourish in the face of positivism or 

of Neo-Kantism unless by vindicating its superiority 

over them in open intellectual discussion ? And if 

these latter systems do not commence the debate, why 

should it not take the initiative ? Where is the use in 

being ait amrnnt with your age if your work is not 

noticed by the men of your age ; and how are you to 

attract their notice unless you raise the questions 

they raise, and in the way they raise them, in order to 

compare and contrast system with system, argument 

with argument ? It is amusing to find philosophers 

at the present day proving against the ancient Greeks 

that the soul is neither a circle nor any other species 

of figure, while they remain in blissful ignorance 

of the agnosticism of a Spencer or the idees-forces 

of a Fouillee. Here, again, the old-time scholastics 

are our masters, if we would only learn from them. 

Thus, St. Augustine breaks a lance not with the 

ancient mystics of Eleusis, but with the Manicheans 

who were swarming all the schools of his day ; while 

Alanus of Lille and William of Auvergne address 

themselves not to the Manicheism of the past, but 

to the contemporary errors of the Cathari and the 

Albigenses. So, too, St. Thomas writes against his 

Averroi stic colleague, Siger of Brabant, in the Uni 

versity of Paris ; he loses no opportunity of attacking 

the theories of the Arabian Averroes and the Jew 

Avicebron : and if he were to come amongst us to-day 

NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND HISTORY 189 

he would leave Siger, Averroes and Avicebron alone, 

and join issue with Paulsen, Wundt, Spencer and 

Boutroux. 

This acquaintance with the systems of our 

adversaries will not only help us to sift the true 

from the false in what they contain, but will likewise 

enable the new scholasticism to benefit by many a 

theory accepted in modern philosophy, to correct its 

own errors and to make good its own shortcomings. 

And as to the great leading principles which it will 

have victoriously defended against modern attacks, 

how much more mature and reasoned will be our 

certitude of them, as a result of such serious dis 

cussions ! Is it not a consoling thing, after all, to 

have gone the rounds of contemporary thought, 

and to have found that the explanations others have 

to offer of the mysteries of life are a much more 

defective and imperfect lot than the little inheritance 

of which we ourselves are in possession ? Is not that 

of itself something to reassure us in those hours of 

darkness when weak human reason grows anxious 

at the fogs and mists that sometimes overcloud 

even its most sacred and cherished convictions ? 

114. All those considerations which we have been 

putting forward in the present Section would appear 

then to issue in a conclusion analogous to that of 

the preceding Section : The reassumption, in the 

abstract, of a vanished philosophical system, has 

no need for the history of philosophy ; and the little 

coterie who would adopt it as their credo may put 

up their library shutters and leave the outer world 

alone. On the other hand, the accommodation of 

the new scholasticism to our own time will require 

a distinct development in historical studies and an 

advance along the lines laid down by modern historical 

criticism. 

190 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

SECTION 23. THE NEW SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY AND 

RELIGIOUS DOGMA. 

115. In this connection the effort to harmonize 

the new scholasticism with modern thought implies 

a considerable departure from the medieval point 

of view. It is not, of course, that we need to establish 

a distinction between philosophy and religious dogma, 

Catholic or otherwise : such distinction was already 

clearly recognised in the Middle Ages (5). The new 

scholasticism is not a theology ; the former might be 

entirely renewed, while the latter remained quite 

stationary and uninfluenced ; or vice versa. Indeed, 

we are just now witnesses to a revolution in theology : 

but the very remarkable controversies of modern 

times upon Biblical criticism and the Inspiration of 

the Scriptures, have little to do with philosophy. 

However, the Middle Ages bound up philosophy 

with theology in a system of the closest hierarchical 

relations : the natural outcome of a civilization in 

which religion held undisputed sway over public 

as well as private life, and Catholicism enjoyed a 

monopoly, in fact and in right, throughout the 

entire Western world. The philosophical curricula 

of the abbey schools, and afterwards of the faculty 

of arts in Paris, are both an index and a product 

of this peculiarly medieval view of things (37). 

But religious as well as political continuity has 

been long since interrupted and broken in society : 

the outcome of which fact is a more or less complete 

neutrality of the State towards religions. So also 

have medieval pedagogic institutions vanished 

with the spirit of which they were the visible embodi 

ment. To attempt a reconstruction of them would 

be endeavouring to set up a regime whose very 

foundations have disappeared. And hence such an 

intermingling of philosophical and theological theses 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND DOGMA 191 

and arguments as is characteristic of the thirteenth 

century Summce, would be entirely out of place and 

unmeaning in our courses and treatises on modern 

scholasticism (37, 45). 

At the present day it is not in connection with 

theology that the problems of scholasticism arise, 

and the progress of the latter discipline is in no way 

dependent on that of the former. Above all, the 

new scholastic philosophy is autonomous : it has a 

value of its own, a value that is absolute and indepen 

dent. In the Middle Ages, over and above that 

function, philosophy fulfilled the role of a guide or 

introduction to theology. The diploma of doctor 

in philosophy is nowadays something more than a 

preparatory step towards degrees in the sacred 

sciences : it stands on its own merits, and its right 

to do so is recognised universally. It now invites 

to its " banquet " not merely those who are destined 

for the service of the Church in the ranks of the clergy, 

whether secular or regular, but all, without exception, 

who have a thirst for knowledge in the better and 

larger sense of the word. It even gives a special 

welcome to those who study it for its own sake, 

without any religious or professional object ; and 

it holds out to all who approach it the promise of 

knowledge and certitude about God and the whole 

universe, about man and man s destiny, and the 

meaning of human life. 

116. But what are we to say of the doctrinal, as 

distinct from the pedagogical, relations established in 

the Middle Ages between philosophy and theology? 

For if extra-doctrinal relations are dependent on 

circumstances of time and place, surely the doctrinal 

relations themselves are above and beyond all such 

conditions ? Must these, therefore, remain unaltered 

in the scholasticism of the twentieth century ? If 

we are correctly gauging the attitude of contemporary 

scholastics on this matter, we believe there is nothing 

192 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

to change on the side of philosophy. The independence 

of modern scholasticism in relation to all theology, 

as in relation to all other sciences whatever, is simply 

an interpretation of that unquestionable principle 

of scientific progress, as applicable in the twentieth 

century as it was in the thirteenth : that a properly 

constituted science derives its formal object, its principles 

and v/x construct f re method,, exclusively jrom its own 

domain ; and that in these things, any borrowing 

from another science would compromise its verv 

right to a separate existence (5). 

The material subordination of the various sciences 

amongst themselves is a law that is logically indis- 

pensible for the unification of human knowledge. 

A truth that has been duhf demonstrated a* certain 

in any one science 4 will serve as a beacon to all other 

sciences." A theory that is certain, in chemistry 

must be accepted in physics : the physicist who 

runs counter to it is surely on a. false track. In 

like manner, the philosopher may not endeavour to 

upset the certain data of theology any more than the 

certain conclusions of the particular sciences. This 

reasoning, which we find formulated by Henry of 

Ghent, is as sound and cogent to-day as it has ever 

been. The manifold forms of scientific activity are 

regulated and limited by a mutual subordination of 

branches, which is, however, negative and prohibitive, 

not positive and imperative. To deny such mutual 

limitations would be denying the conformity of truth 

with truth : it would be denying the principle of 

contradiction, and yielding to a relativism destructive 

of all knowledge (38). 1 

[* Hence a philosophy is untrue in so far as it contradicts Revealed 

Truth ; and he alone possesses the fulness of truth so far as it can 

be had in this world who possesses the Christian Philosophy of Life, 

that Philosophy which embraces and harmonizes natural and revealed 

truth. As we have written elsewhere in this connection : " However 

systems may differ there is only one true Philosophy of Life, varied 

and manifold as its expressions may be. Life has its departments 

of thought and of action ; but these, though distinct, are related. 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND DOGMA 193 

But when is a theory certain ? Here is a question 

of fact, in which it is easy to make mistakes. In 

proportion as the principle is simple and absolute, 

its applications would seem to be complex and 

variable. It is no more the philosopher s business 

to vindicate the certainty of theological data than of 

the conclusions of physics or chemistry. On these 

matters he must look for certitude elsewhere : and 

so long as it is not to be found he need take little 

notice of such data or conclusions. 

117. From the point of view of philosophy pure 

and simple, so far is Catholicism from being insepar 

ably bound up with the new scholasticism that during 

the last century philosophers have been endeavouring, 

in the very best faith, to adapt the most varied and 

widely divergent systems of philosophy to the 

teachings of Christianity and so we see repeated 

once more a phenomenon which was observed taking 

place in the Middle Ages, at the Renaissance, and 

during the formation and development of the numerous 

systems of modern philosophy (43, 4th reason). 

Several such examples will be easily recalled : 

Gunther s Dualism, now forgotten, but only after 

a long spell of popularity in Germany and Austria 

owing to its unmistakable tinge of Hegelianisnr ; 

Eosmini s philosophy in Italy, founded by one who 

was a saintly priest though an unsafe psychologist, 

and which can still count numerous sincere disciples ; ! 

Traditionalism, so ably defended by De Bonald and 

Bautain ; Ontologism, which has had no living voice to 

The true and the good are standards in all, whether in Nature or above 

it. If man s mind and heart conform to them fully, he is a philosopher 

and a Catholic. In so far as he deviates, he falls into error and evil 

If his philosophy is out of harmony with Revealed Truth, it stands 

convicted of error. The man who loves truth and seeks it will embrace 

a philosophy that makes room for Revelation and recognises on earth 

an Infallible Exponent of that divine message to mankind." Thoughts 

on Philosophy and Religion, in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, May, 

1906, p. 388. Tr.] 

1 The organ of Rosminianism is the periodical // Nuovo Risorgi- 

mento, edited by the irascible Mr. Billia. 

o 

194 KXTIIA-DOCTRIXAL XOTIOXS 

plead for it since the death of .Professor Ubaghs of the 

University of Lou vain ; and, finally and especially, 

the Cousinian, eclectic Spiritualism which has so long 

been the " oilicial philosophy" of France, and which 

is even still to he met with in so many of its semi 

naries : between all these systems and scholasticism, 

whether ancient or modern, there are very profound 

differences, and nevertheless the supporters of these 

systems were good Catholics. " Associated with the 

names of Descartes. Malebranche. Leibnitz. Balmes, 

Rosmini, etc. [these doctrines and theories] became 

as familiar to tin* new, as pure scholasticism had been 

to the older generations. It was a sort of eclecticism, 

not verv deep, or systematic, or stron^ ; vet it was 

O . 

truly a Christian philosophy, loyal to the faith and 

to the Church : and helped, like the theories it 

superseded, to light up the obscurities of revealed 

truth, to defend its doctrines, and to establish peace 

between reason and faith." 1 

The most interesting of those attempts to square 

a given philosophical system with Catholicism is that 

which is now being actually made by a group of 

French Catholics -not merely lav, but clerical who 

1 Hogan, "/\ cit., p. ,}S. The author remarks that "one of the 

most eloquent panegyrics ever written on Descartes" came from the 

pen of a Jesuit, Vr. Guenard (ibid., p. 57). 

[Neither to the quotation in the text above, nor to the paragraphs 

illustrated by it, can any reasonable exception be taken ; for they 

fully recognize the ))iatcrial dependence of philosophy on theology, 

and imply that no theory or system can be true if it contradicts any 

doctrine established as certainly true by theology. They do not, 

however, make it quite clear how far the above-mentioned systems, 

or any of them, have a right to be called " Catholic," or to be described 

as " Christian Philosophy." The author s views on the relation of 

Philosophy to Religion and Supernatural Theology, his apparent 

denial (cf. below, p. 197) that Catholicism can be exclusively and 

inseparably bound up with any one system of philosophy (and his 

alleged definition of Scholastic Philosophy by its content alone, 

exclusive of its method) have been adversely criticized in the Etudes- 

Franciscaincs (October, 1904, pp. 338-355 ; March, 1905, pp. 270, seq. 

Libcralisme philosophique : A propos d nn livrc recent) by Pere Diego- 

Joseph, and defended in the same Review (January, 1905, pp. 36-54. 

Reponse au " Lib&ralismc philosophique") by Pere Hadelin. Cf. p. 192, 

footnote. Tr.] 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND DOGMA 195 

arc enthusiastic supporters of Neo-Kantism. The 

movement is of recent date, and is making rapid 

progress. Its significance is all the greater because 

it shares the many attractions of a well-known, 

widespread and fashionable philosophy ; and also 

because it is contemporary with an almost universal 

coalition of Catholic philosophers mainly of priests 

and religious who profess and advocate allegiance 

to a modern scholasticism. 

The intellectual dictatorship of Kant is nowadays 

officially proclaimed and acknowledged in most 

universities, especially in France and Germany. 

From the calm heights of pure speculation, which 

are familiar to the philosopher alone, Kant s teaching 

and theories have also found their way into the 

prefaces of scientific works and into avowedly popu 

larizing treatises ; nay, they have even percolated 

into our modern dramas and romances. 1 We believe 

that the explanation of the enormous influence of 

Kantism lies in its remarkable combination of a 

theoretical subjectivism with a practical dogmatism. 

The phenomenism which is the last word of the 

Critique of Pure Reason, and which Bergson has 

pushed to its logical extremes, would never have 

caught on without the noumenism of the Critique 

of Practical Reason. Kant s ethics serve as a palliative 

after his criteriology, for they establish, on the basis 

of sentiment and will, the existence of God and of 

the soul, as well as human liberty and immortality : 

all of which realities or things-in-themselves the 

intelligence of man is unable to discover, and which 

are, nevertheless, the indispensable nourishment of 

moral and social life. Hence, we see, it was mainly 

on the ground of his ethical teaching that the 

1 Witness the Deracinees of Maurice Barres, and more especially 

the Nouvelle Idole of Francois De Curel. This piece, played some years 

ago at the Antoine theatre in Paris and the Moli<*re theatre in Brussels, 

contains some curious and characteristic assertions of agnosticism and 

Neo-Kantian voluntarism. 

196 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

" return " movement " towards Kant (" Zuruck 

zu Kant ") was accomplished. But is there any 

real possibility of good companionship between the 

mutilated certitude of a reason that rules a world of 

mere representations and the certitude of a will that 

goes deeper down into another world of extramental 

realities ? Is it a logical theory, this of the two 

certitudes ? We doubt it gravely, and that for 

reasons of a purely philosophical kind ; this, however, 

is not the question to settle here. 

Suffice it to remark that this " voluntarism " will 

allow a Catholic, who accept* t/ic two antinomian 

certitudes of Ka)itixm* to hold that the. objective data 

on which the Catholic faith is based are illusory in 

the face of pure reason, and at the sumo time to hold 

their reality and affirm their real existence through 

and for the will. 

And there are, in fact. Catholic Neo-Kantians. 

Olle-Laprmie, with his sentimental philosophy, may 

be said to have prepared the way for them. " Even 

philosophical knowledge, even rational certitude is 

not a product of the pure understanding, of the pure 

reason. Belief is an integral element of science, 

just as science is an integral element of belief ; that 

is to say, that the life of the spirit is always one 

and continuous with the life of the being himself ; 

or again, that philosophy is indissolubly a matter 

both of reason and of soul ; or again, finally, that 

thought can neither suffice for life, nor can life find 

in itself alone its light, its strength and its whole law. 

We must discern more than reason in man, and more 

than man in reason. M. Blondel, who sums up 

in those words the teaching of Olle-Laprune, 1 has 

himself improved on his master ; and others have 

followed these in a direction leading straight to 

Neo-Kantism. Indeed, to arrive there nothing 

more was required than to bring Olle-Laprune s 

1 M. Blondel, Leon Olle-Laprune (Paris, 1899). 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND DOGMA 197 

attack on reason into explicit conformity with the 

Kantian Criticism, and to confine all certitude about 

the real woild to man s volitional activity. 

On this peculiar attitude of certain French Catholics 

the reader will find copious bibliographical infor 

mation combined with some suggestive comments, 

in an exhaustive article published in the Kantstudien 

a periodical which keeps thoroughly abreast of the 

evolution of Kantism. " Notwithstanding the Ency 

clical of the 4th of August, 1879, which describes 

Christian philosophy as scholastic," writes M. Leclere, 

" and the Encyclical of the 8th of September, 1899, 

condemning Kantism, there are in this land of 

France where the faithful are usually so prompt to 

hearken to the voice of the Holy See Catholics and 

even priests, who have consciously or unconsciously 

drawn their inspiration from Kant, and continue to 

do so, in the hope of -building up in this wise a new 

philosophy that may serve as a human basis for 

revealed faith ; and they contend that they are as 

free from heresy as the Thomists who are opposing 

them, or the Cartesians who are left quietly alone." * 

118. Let us, therefore, freely accept the conclusion 

that a Catholic may, in good faith, give his allegiance 

to systems other than the new scholasticism/ 

1 Albert Leclere, Le mouvement Catholique Kantien en France a 

I hen re presents (Kantstudien, Bd. VII., H. 2 and 3). Reprint, 1902, 

p. 2. 

- [This, of course, does not in any way imply that conflicting systems 

may be true together ; nor is it in any way incompatible with what 

has been said above regarding that matter (See footnote, p. 194). A 

Catholic may adhere, in good faith, to a system that is on the whole 

unsound. I have elsewhere gone " so far as to say that if by different 

philosophical systems are meant presentations and combinations of 

the same general truth looked at from different points of view, then 

you can have a number of such systems in accord with Revelation. 

Hence the answer to the interesting question how far Catholics may 

adhere to different schools or systems of philosophy will depend very 

largely on the view taken as to the meaning of a school or a system. 

In so far as these are merely different expressions or presentations 

of the same natural truths from different standpoints they are in 

necessary harmony with Revealed Truth, and a Catholic is free to 

choose. But in so far as they are contradictory of each other, some 

of them must be erroneous, and such error may be in logical opposition 

108 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTION S 

This being so, it is clear that there can be no such 

thing as a, Catholic philosophy any more than there. 

can be a Catholic science.^ But there are philo 

sophers who in the matter of religion profess definite 

dogmatic beliefs, just as there are chemists or medical 

doctors who an- at the same time Catholics, or 

Protestants, or Jews. Modern scholasticism will 

progress and develop without meddling in any way 

with matters of religion ; it would be a fatal blunder 

to confound it with apologetics. 5 

The following paragraph, taken from one of the 

most eminent leaders of the ne\v scholastic move 

ment, sets forth clearly and foivibly the proper 

attitude for Catholic scientists to take up as a 

safeguard and pledge of freedom in their scientific 

speculations : 

. . . the false notion is abroad that the Catholic 

sanotf is always and ncces^arilv defending his faith. 

<lirrct.lv or indirectly to sonic revealed truth ; and if it he, just 

as no philosopher should adhere to it it he saw its erroneous character. 

so also no Catholic should adhere to it if he saw its opposition to 

Revelation. But a Catholic may see neither the error nor the opposi 

tion in question ; and, so Ions; as he does not, he may adhere to the 

system without seeing the logical inconsistency of his position. All 

the more so, as he may in good faith interpret Revelation in a sense 

which he regards as true, and which is dc facto consistent with his 

philosophical views. But all that will not make these latter any les* 

erroneous or any less opposed to the true meaning of the Revealed 

Truth in question. St. Augustine, Scotus, Kriugena, Abelard, St. 

Thomas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam. Nicholas of Cusa, Descartes, 

Gassendi, Malebranche. .Pascal, Rosmini, were all alike Catholics ; 

but is that any proof that their philosophical systems, which differed 

so widely, were all substantially true or substantially orthodox, or 

that some of those mentioned did not remain Catholics rather in spite 

of their philosophy, so to speak, and through bona-fidc ignorance of 

the unsoundness of their systems ? " /. E. Record, art. cit., pp. 387-388. 

Cf. above p. 74. Tr.} 

1 [This is quite true, and quite consistent with the negative and 

material subordination of philosophy to theology insisted on above 

(p. 192) ; as also with the fact that there can be only one true Philosophy 

in the larger sense of a Philosophy of Life. (See footnote, p. 192). Tr.} 

- Biblical criticism and scientific discoveries of all sorts have given 

a considerable impetus to modern apologetics. In fact, they have 

practically made it a new science : unlike medieval apologetics, it 

appeals not merely to philosophy but to all the special sciences. Even 

in the Middle Ages, however, philosophy proper was distinguished from 

dialectic or apologetic philosophy (39) : a distinction that is more 

important nowadays than it ever has been. 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND DOGMA 199 

that in his hands science must needs be a weapon 

to be utilized for that sole purpose. Indeed, not a 

few are disposed to regard the Catholic savant as 

living in constant dread of the thunderbolt of an 

excommunication, as bound hand and foot by 

distressing and cramping dogmas, as utterly unable 

either to profess or to feel a disinterested love for 

science, or to pursue it for its own sake, so long as 

he remains faithful to his religion. Hence the 

distrust he encounters on all sides. A publication 

issuing from a Catholic institution Protestant ones 

are received with less disfavour, doubtless because 

they are regarded as having given some proof of 

their independence by their revolt from authority- 

is almost invariably treated as a plea pro domo, a 

one-sided, apologetic affair, to be refused a priori 

the right of an impartial, objective examination." 

" We must aim at forming, in greater 

numbers, men who will devote themselves to science 

for its own sake, without any other or remoter aim 

of a professional or apologetical character, men who 

will work at first hand in fashioning the materials 

of the edifice of science, and so make original con 

tributions towards its gradual construction." 

It would be an utter mistake to imagine that the 

new scholasticism was called into existence to do 

battle for any religious belief ; or to imagine with 

M. Pica vet, for example, that " Catholics, identifying 

it with Thomism . . . contend that it has the 

same value for them as it had for the orthodox 

Thomists of the thirteenth century." 3 

1 Mercier, Rapport SUY les Etudes superieures de philosophie, presented 

to the Congress of Malines, September 9th, 1891, p. 9. 

2 Ibid., p. 17. 

3 Picavet, in the Grande Encyclopedic under the word " scolastique " 

(last paragraph). 

200 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

SECTION 24. THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND THE 

MODERN SCIENCES. 

119. The history of the sciences during the last three 

centuries, especially during the nineteenth, is like the 

tale of one grand triumphal inarch of the human 

mind. In the domain of visible Nature, the inductive 

methods have led to astonishing discoveries- 

discoveries that have made the world of the twentieth 

century almost another world altogether from that 

of the Middle Ages ; and Nature is being forced to 

yield ui) more of her secrets every day. 

v -j j 

From the standpoint of method, or the general 

logic of the sciences, three profound differences mark 

off the modern from the medieval < poeh : the multi 

plication of the sciences : their separation from 

philosophy; and the distinct ion between common or 

ordinary knowledge cofpiifio ni/yaris and scientific 

knowledge. 

In the Middle Ages astronomy bordered on astro 

logy, chemistry on alchemy, and physics on magic ; 

in our days science has ruthlessly eliminated whatever 

is groundless or fanciful. By sifting and searching 

the nature of corporeal things in every conceivable 

way, new aspects of matter have been revealed in 

rapid succession, and each distinct point of view has 

become the centre and starting-point of a new branch 

of scientific study. This multiplication of the 

sciences has gone hand in hand with a more careful 

and exact determination of their respective 

boundaries : to take a few examples at random, we 

see that crystallography, stereochemistry, cellular 

biology, bacteriology, are confined each within the 

sphere of a perfectly definite " formal object," which 

we might describe as the typical angle at which each 

of them approaches the study of a more or less 

considerable group of things. 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND SCIENCE 201 

By thus determining their respective boundaries 

the sciences secured for themselves an autonomous 

power, and thus loosened the ties which had hitherto 

bound them so closely to philosophy. In the Middle 

Ages they were considered as mere preliminaries to 

the study of rational physics (48, 49) ; specialized 

research had no meaning except as a preparation 

for the synthetic process of philosophy. To-day 

the sciences have a meaning and a value of their own : 

each has its own work cut out for it ; and their 

separation from philosophy is complete. Unfortu 

nately, the impetus of extreme and prejudiced 

notions has exaggerated that friendly, mutual inde 

pendence into a hostile divorce ; the scientists have 

gone one way, the philosophers another ; and the 

disastrous old prejudice has too readily taken root 

a prejudice so unjust, untrue, and injurious to all 

branches of knowledge that the results furnished 

by the work of the one party are incompatible with 

those yielded by the labours of the other. 

The progress of each special science within its 

own domain has wrought yet another revolution in 

human knowledge. Until mechanical instruments 

for the accurate and detailed observation of pheno 

mena were forthcoming, inductive methods were 

necessarily restricted in their application ; and it 

was, as a rule, impossible to get beyond a very 

elementary knowledge of the workings of Nature. 

It was well known in the thirteenth century, for 

example, that wine exposed to the air became vinegar. 

But what is such knowledge compared with the 

complex formulas of modern chemistry ? In those 

ages Albert the Great or Roger Bacon might boast 

of having mastered all the sciences of their time ; 

nowadays any such pretension would provoke a 

smile. In every single branch, progress has com 

pelled the distinction between common and scientific 

knowledge. The former is usually the starting-point 

202 EXTRA- DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

for the latter ; but the teaching and conclusions 

of the various sciences can be fully understood only 

after a long and laborious process of initiation in 

the case of each and every one of them. 

120. Do those profound changes in the outlines 

and contents of the sciences imply a corresponding 

change in the relations established in the Middle 

Ages between science and philosophy, in tlie attitude 

of each order of studies towards the other? Will 

modern scholasticism pay no heed to the discoveries of 

those sciences, or will it rather draw its inspiration 

from those discoveries ? 

There should be no mistaking the principle 

underlying the answer to such a (juestion. Tin- 

considerations that urged medieval scholasticism to 

keep in touch with the sciences are a thousand times 

more cogent nowadays than ever they were. If the 

deep and all-embracing view t/taf justifies ilie separate 

ej ixtence o/ philosophy (48) presupposes analytic 

researches, is it because these latter have been 

multiplied exceedingly that we are to begin to ignore 

them ? The horizon of specialized knowledge is 

" All that exi>t>, as contemplated by the human mind, forms on* 

large system or complex fact. . . . Now, it is not wonderful that, 

with all its capabilities, the human mind cannot take in this whole 

vast fact at a single glance, or gain possession of it at once. Like 

a short-sighted reader, its eye pores closely, and travels slowly, over 

the awful volume which lies open, for its inspection. Or again, as we 

deal with some huge structure of many parts and sides, the mind goes 

round about it, noting down, first one thing, then another, as best 

it may, and viewing it under different aspects, by way of making 

progress towards mastering the whole. . . . These various partial 

views or abstractions . . . are called sciences .... they 

proceed on the principle of a division of labour. . . . As they all 

belong to one and the same circle, of objects, they are one and all 

connected together ; as they are but aspects of things, they are severally 

incomplete in their relation to the things themselves, though complete 

in their own idea and for their own respective purposes ; on both 

accounts they at once need and subserve each other. And further, 

the comprehension of the bearings of one science on another, and the 

use of each to each, and the location and limitation and adjustment 

and due appreciation of them all, with one another, this belongs, I con 

ceive, to a sort of science distinct from all of them, and in some sense, 

a science of sciences, which is my own conception of what is meant by 

philosophy. . . ." Newman, Idea of a University : Discourse III., 

3, 4 (pp. 44-51). 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND SCIENCE 203 

ever receding ; all sorts of researches liave parcelled 

out between them the various departments of the 

visible universe : and is it that philosophy, whose 

very mission is to explain that universal order by 

its highest and widest principles by principles 

applying not merely to this or that particular group 

of facts but to the totality of known phenomena- 

should be unconcerned about the very thing to be 

explained ! Philosophy is like a watch-tower from 

which we gaze out upon the panorama of some 

stately city. We take in its general outline, the 

great arteries of its commercial life, its main streets 

and public places, its most striking monuments, 

their general appearance and relative positions : 

in a word, all the many things that a passing visitor 

fails to see, who merely walks through its streets 

and laneways, or visits its libraries, churches, galleries 

and museums. But what if the city gradually grows 

and stretches away into the dim distance ? Why, 

evidently all the more reason if we would still 

secure a bird s-eye-view of it to ascend, and, if 

needs be, to build, still higher, the steps of our tower, 

and so be able to discern the general plan and the 

main, outstanding features of the more modern 

quarters. 

Moreover, the new scholasticism is heir to certain 

theories in explanation of the cosmic order ; and 

those theories it holds to be as valid and as fruitful 

at the present day as they were in the days of 

Aristotle or of St. Thomas, while its opponents 

declare them to be irreconcilable with the conclusions 

of modern science. Would it then be wise or oppor 

tune to withdraw those principles from the shock 

of an encounter with current difficulties and from 

the test of a comparison with the established truths 

of science, as the weak and the feeble are wont to 

be sheltered from trying conflicts ? Of two things, 

one or other : Either the old principles are powerless 

204 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

to interpret and assimilate the established data of 

the modern sciences, in which case modern scholastics 

seeking truth above all things, as they do will 

no longer allow mere chimeras to lull them to a false 

security. Or those old principles will not yield an 

inch to the systems invented by modern, philosophers, 

but will adapt themselves equally well to the new 

facts and furnish an equally satisfactory interpre 

tation of them ; in which case, the philosophy of the 

past will have come out victoriously from the contest 

and established a rightful claim to bo likewise the 

philosophy of the present. That is exactly the 

reason why the wedding of philosophy to the sciences 

is not merely one of the striking features of the 

present scholastic revival, but oven the principal 

aim of the promoters and pioneers of the movement. 

The principle was clearly and explicitly laid down 

by Leo Xll I. in the Encyclical .Etcrni I*<itri* ; and the 4 , 

Louvain Philosophical Institute, founded by his 

orders, has consistently carried out its application in 

every department of its teaching. 1 

121. It would l)e almost impossible to enumerate 

the men of note who have lent their warm support 

to this programme, or to give even a faint outline 

of the arguments they bring forward in favour of it. 

Two books, chosen at random from a number, will 

supply copious information to those who are interested 

in the very actual question of the reconciliation of 

philosophy with the sciences ; the one, historical : 

La philosophic del a nature cJicz les anciens, 2 by M. Ch. 

Huit ; the other, more theoretical : Contribution 

philosopJiique a F etude des sciences, 3 by Canon Didiot 

of the Catholic Faculty of Lille. 

Then, moreover, the necessity of a scientific 

1 [See Appendix. TV. "I 

- Paris, 1901. Crowned by the French Academy of Moral and 

Political Sciences. 

" Lille, 1902. Cf. Baunard, Un sieclc dc I Eglisc de France, 1902, Ch. 

" Etudes divines et humaines." 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND SCIENCE 205 

philosophy is admitted everywhere at the present 

day, not merely by modern scholastics but by all 

the leaders of thought in the most widely divergent 

schools of philosophy. M. Boutroux, for example, 

is constantly insisting on the importance of a good 

understanding between philosophers and scientists. 

We have all the more pleasure in quoting some 

statements of the learned Sorbonne professor, recently 

made at a few Philosophical Congresses, because 

they amount to an emphatic expression of Aris 

totelian and scholastic teaching. " Such a union," 

he said, " is in fact the classic tradition of philosophy. 

But there came a psychology and a metaphysics with 

the claim that they could exist and develop 

independently of the sciences by drawing their 

nourishment from the self-conscious reflexion of the 

human mind. To-day, however, philosophers are 

all at one in taking scientific data for their starting- 

point." 1 Of course ; for the essential function of 

philosophy is to harmonize and unify in some higher 

synthesis the things that are given to us as separate. 

" Side by side with the analytical researches in which 

the positive sciences are almost exclusively concerned, 

there must be another order of researches wherein 

the mind will examine, in things, the conditions of 

their intelligibility, truth, harmony and perfection. 

Logic, Psychology, Moral should faithfully preserve 

within them the leaven of Metaphysics, which will 

some day perhaps take up current experimental 

theories and breathe a ixew life into them. .... 

These reflections on the state and scope of philosophy 

will help to determine the aim and method of philo 

sophical teaching in our universities. Such teaching 

ought to have both a universal and a special character. 

In fact, what is peculiar to such training, and what 

1 Opening discourse at the International Congress of Philosophy, 

organized in 1900 by the Revue de metaphysique et de morale. See same 

Review, Sepcember, 1900, p. 697. 

206 KXTKA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

differentiates it from all other mental disciplines, 

is just this feature of universality. It aims at 

embracing things and sciences, theory and practice, 

concrete and abstract, real and ideal, matter and mind, 

both iu their inner mutual relations and in their 

underlying unity. To accomplish this task, it must 

have constant recourse to the positive sciences, and 

it must likewise constantly refresh itself with reflex 

thought. 

Professor \\undt ot Leipzig, whose exceptional 

competence m science and philosophy adds great 

weight to his authority, is of the same way of thinking. 

One particular paragraph in his Einleituny hi die 

Philosophic** where he deals r.r professo with the 

present question, concludes with this significant 

definition of philosophy : " Philosophy is the general 

science whose function is to unify in one consistent 

system all the knowledge brought to light by means 

of the several special sciences, and to trace back to 

their first principles the methods in common use 

in those sciences and the conditions which they in 

common assume as prerequisites to all knowledge." 3 

Yet another well-known scientist of Leipzig, Ostwald, 

professor of chemistry, writes in an introductory 

article in the Annalen der Naturphilosophie, that 

under his editorship the review will aim at " exploring 

the territory that is common to philosophy and the 

special sciences." Finally, we may quote these 

interesting words of Professor Rhiel : " Never in the 

history of science," he writes, " was there an epoch 

more given to philosophy than the present one. 

1 International Congress on Higher Education, 1900, in the Revue 

Internationale dc I cnseigncmc nt, December 1=5, 1901, pp. ^07-^09. 

- Leipzig, 1901. 

3 Section 2, Philosophic und Wissenschaft / " Philosophic ist die 

allgemeine Wissenschaft, welche die durch die Einzehvissenschaften 

vermittelten Erkentnisse zu einem widerspruchlosen System zu 

vereinigen, mid die von der Wissenschaft beniitzten allgemeinen 

Methoden und Yoraussetzungen des Erkennens auf ihre Principien 

zuriikzufiihren hat " (p. 19), 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND SCIENCE 207 

. For we are now coming to see the value 

and the significance of the inevitable division of 

labour that has forced itself upon us. . . . This 

is the age of synthetic science, and synthesis is 

synonymous with philosophy." 1 

122. The reader will have to pardon us for giving 

such lengthy quotations. They are needed in view 

of the attitude of those lovers of tradition who are 

unrelenting adversaries of everything modern : the 

testimony of such unimpeachable witnesses as we 

have just mentioned, in favour of a philosophy based 

on the sciences, ought to set those people thinking. 

Laudatores temporis acti, tenaciously conservative of 

the past, they wish to know nothing about what is 

going on around them, because they imagine that it 

is all simply and solely an attack upon their fortress 

of truth. Vetera is their motto : paleo- scholastic 

their name. When we remember that some of them 

have suggested that the Almighty may have created 

the fossils in the state in which the geologists 

have found them, we cannot well refrain from a 

sceptical smile.* The fact is, these men live amid 

their contemporaries, indeed, but are certainly not 

of them ; to give samples of their out-of-date 

knowledge would not be worth the trouble. We 

shall be better employed examining some of the 

reasons by which they seek to justify their voluntary 

ignorance of science. Those reasons are partly of 

a theoretical, partly of a practical kind. 

Ordinary observation, they say, yields an adequate 

foundation for philosophy. This is proved by the 

very existence of scholasticism. Seeing that the 

Middle Ages have been able to rear such an imposing 

edifice of synthetic thought without the aid of modern 

scientific theories, why should we now have recourse 

1 A. Rhiei, Zuv Einfuhrung in die Philosophic dev Gegcnwart (Leipzig, 

1902), p. 247. 

- Cf. Besse, op. cit., p. 32. 

208 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

to these latter for the reconstruction of that same 

edifice ? 

Yes, of course, even ordinary superficial observation 

is usually trustworthy in its informations ; and it 

will accordingly furnish sound materials for abstract 

philosophical thought. Otherwise how would the 

ancients have ever known anything at all about the 

philosophy of Nature ? But that is not the question 

here. The question is whether ordinary observation 

will suffice (dwfUfx and crrrt/tr/tct t . Or are there not 

whole regions of things quite inaccessible to common, 

unaided experience ? And can t he philosopher remain 

altogether indifferent to these. ? Such questions must 

be almost superfluous : to ask them is to answer 

them. Has not biology let in a flood of light on the 

philosophical study of human nature ; and have not 

chemistry and crystallography done the same for 

* . O J_ / 

that of inorganic nature ? Would it be wise," 

asks Professor Nys, "to condemn ourselves to use 

indefinitely the primitive utensils of our ancestors, 

for the sole reason that they had no better for their 

purposes in their day ? All visible nature 

is nowadays revealed to our gaze in quite a new light. 

Why should the philosopher not take advantage of 

this newly known world and interrogate and explore 

it for his ow r n special purpose ? " So truly has 

every new phenomenon its philosophical side that 

" there is not at the present day, in the study of 

visible nature, a single branch that is not crowned 

with some philosophical hypothesis or other." * 

More than this. It is just one of those hypotheses 

and one that is seriously entertained which now 

calls into question the very foundations of that 

common observation on which our old-time scholastics 

are still fain to build : the hypothesis that denies all 

specific distinction between the various properties 

1 Nys, Cosmologie (Louvain, 1903), p. 23. 

- Ibid., p. 24. 

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM AND SCIENCE 209 

of corporeal things. Modern atomism would reduce 

all those properties to mere movements of one homo 

geneous matter. And there is little use in trying 

to answer its arguments by a mere appeal to ordinary 

common sense or to a long-standing tradition. For 

better or worse the question has been pushed back, 

by an analysis of both common sense and tradition, 

to the domain of science, and either there or nowhere 

must it be answered. 1 

123. Besides this theoretical objection, difficulties 

of the practical order have been urged against the 

realization of the new scholastic programme. The 

special sciences are so extensive, and their growth 

in recent times has been so rapid, that no individual 

philosopher can hope even to reconnoitre those vast 

regions, much less to master them. " Science," in 

the Aristotelian sense of the word, is become an 

Utopia, an ideal not given to mortal to realize. 

We will let one of the ablest promoters of the new 

scholasticism answer that objection. " At the present 

day," writes Mgr. [now Cardinal] Mercier, " when the 

sciences have become so vast and so numerous, how are 

we to achieve the double task of keeping au courant 

with all of them, and of synthesizing their results ? 

The difficulty is in truth a serious one, nor is it in 

the power of any one individual to surmount it. 

His courage will fail and his unaided effort count 

for little in presence of the daily widening field of 

observation. And therefore it is that the association 

must make up for the insufficiency of the isolated 

individual ; that men of analysis and men of synthesis 

must come together and form, by their daily inter 

course and united action, an atmosphere suited to 

the harmonious and equal development both of 

science and of philosophy. "* 

But, then, if all philosophy presupposes a knowledge 

1 Ibid., p. 25. 

- La phil-osophie neo-scolastique (Revue Neo-Scolastique, 1894, p. 17). 

[Cf. Appendix, infra. TV.] 

P 

210 EXTRA-DOCTRINAL NOTIONS 

of the sciences, and if on the other hand it is Utopian 

to aim at knowing all the sciences in detail, where 

are wo to draw the line ? Then, too, among those 

who want to unite the study of scholastic philosophy 

with the study of the modern sciences, very few are 

likely to become aoudnc research student* in the 

scientific domain : most of them will be satisfied to take 

their scientific conclusions on the authority of others. 

This must be admitted unless special scientific 

courses are provided for students of philosophy. All 

the necessities of the case can be met only by some 

such special arrangement. For, the general scientific 

courses in our modern universities contain either 

too much or too little for students of philosophy : 

" too much, because the professional scientific training 

which they provide must go into a multiplicity of 

|. clinical details that are not needed for the study 

of philosophy ; too little, inasmuch as the observation 

of facts is often the ultimate aim of professional 

training, whereas from the point of view of philosophy 

it can be only a means, a starting-point towards the 

discovery of their highest laws and causes." 1 

M. Boutroux holds the same views upon the teach 

ing of philosophy in universities : a wide and elastic 

organization of the philosophical faculty should find 

a place within it for " all the theoretical, mathematico- 

physical and philologico-historical sciences." 2 Such 

special teaching as M. Boutroux advocates, and for 

the same reasons, has been available and availed 

of 3 for the past fifteen years at the Philosophical 

Institute of Lou vain University. 4 

1 Mercier, Rapport tur Ics ttudcs titpcritio cs dc philosophic, p. 25. 

(Louvain, 1891). 

- L Enscizncmcut dc la philosophic. Communicated to the Inter 

national Congress on Higher Education, 1900 (Revue internat. de 

1 enseign., 1901, p. 510. 

:! [See Appendix, infra. TV. ] 

4 [To yet another objection, that the instability and imperfection 

of the sciences do not as yet guarantee us in attempting to base a 

system of philosophy on them, see the answer given by M. Besse, 

Appendix, infra. Tr.} 

CHAPTER II. 

THE DOCTRINES OF THE NEW 

SCHOLASTICISM. 

SECTION 25. DOCTRINAL INNOVATIONS. 

124. The thoughts to which we have been so far 

giving expression will reveal the sense in which 

modern scholasticism aims at submitting the great, 

leading principles of medieval scholasticism to the 

control of the latest results of scientific progress. 

The application of this test has modified the doctrinal 

content of the new scholasticism so far that we may 

distinguish it from its medieval ancestor : theories 

now known to have been false are simply ABANDONED ; 

the great, constitutive doctrines of the medieval 

system are RETAINED, but only after having successfully 

stood the double test of comparison with the conclusions 

of present-day science and with the teachings of 

contemporary systems of philosophy ; new facts have 

been brought to light, and under their influence a 

store of new ideas has ENRICHED the patrimony of 

the ancient scholasticism. 

125. In the first place, a single stroke of the pickaxe 

has stripped the walls of the old scholastic edifice 

of a whole pile of decayed and mouldering plaster : 

theories transparently false, inspired by erroneous 

astronomical physics and applied to the interpretation 

of Nature (77, 78), and in which arbitrary obser 

vations of phenomena were connected by bonds no 

less arbitrary with cosmological or metaphysical 

212 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

principles. Only a fool would nowadays maintain 

the relative superiority of the substance of the stars 

compared with that of the earth. Their incorrupti 

bility, their substantial individuality, their peculiar 

mode of composition from matter and form, their 

subjection to extrinsic spiritual movers, their influence 

on the generation of certain forms of mundane life : 

these are some of the theories defended by St. Thomas 

but repudiated by all modern scholastics. The 

same applies to numerous theories in w * terrestrial 

physics," such as that of the locus natural ix, and that 

of the four chemically simple bodies with their sets 

of properties (79) ; and also to numerous views 

peculiar to medieval psychology, such as the trans 

mission of " species sensibiles " through space, and 

their reception into the sense organs (87). 

Still more of those old scholastic theories, especially 

in the domain of visible nature, are likely to become 

discredited according as modern science proves their 

insufficiency. Our own friend and colleague, Pro 

fessor Nys, has shown clearly, for example, that 

experiments in the vivisection of the higher kinds of 

organisms compel us to extend our teaching as to 

the divisibility of essential forms to all the animating 

principles in the animal kingdom, and so to abandon 

the Thomistic theory on the essential simplicity 

of the higher forms of organic life. 1 

Then, finally, it is plain that of the vast body of 

doctrines that are certain to survive scientific tests, 

all are not of equal importance. Nowadays, just as 

in the Middle Ages, there are views and opinions 

which open discussion or personal convictions are 

free to introduce or not to introduce into the new 

scholasticism, without in any way interfering with 

its broad and distinctive principles (31). 

126. This work of renovation and reconstruction 

1 Nys, La divisibilite des formes cssenticlles (Revue Neo-Scolastique, 

1902, p. 47.) 

DOCTRINAL INNOVATIONS 213 

will show forth, the main lines of the edifice and give 

scope for the application of new designs. The 

organic principles of the system undergoing restoration 

must unquestionably form the basis of the new scho 

lasticism. But let there be no mistake about the 

scope of the contemplated restoration. It will not 

be brought about insensibly or unconsciously : it 

will not be merely mechanical or merely a priori. 

Here, above all, it behoves us to form well-reasoned 

convictions, based on long and ripe reflection. The 

new scholasticism must assert and make good its 

claim to live ; and for that it must stand the test 

of comparison with rival systems (113) and of agree 

ment with scientific conclusions (120). The matter 

and form theory is an explanation of cosmic change ; 

but it will not survive the twentieth century unless 

it compares favourably with mechanical atomism 

and with dynamism, both of which hypotheses claim 

to have discovered the true meaning of the facts. 

Scholastic spiritualism and scholastic ideology offer 

an interpretation of the facts of consciousness and 

an explanation of the difference between sensation 

and thought ; but they must also show us that the 

explanation offered by the positivists is not any better 

supported by the results of modern scientific research. 

The Middle Ages propounded doctrines of the most 

purely idealistic character regarding happiness and 

the last end of man ; but perhaps the utilitarianism 

of the positivists, or the formalism of Kant, or the 

pessimism of Schopenhauer, have shown those ideals 

to be chimerical ? Finally, metaphysics was regarded 

as the perfection and completion of knowledge in 

the schools of other days ; nowadays, its very 

possibility is called into question. Which is in the 

right, the past or the present ? It is important 

that we should know. 

127. Each epoch in philosophy reveals a mental 

attitude all its own ; its favourite occupations 

214 MODERX SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

disappear to give place to new pursuits in the next 

epoch. Ancient India devoted most of its specu 

lation to the monistic blending of all things in the 

region of the real. Greek philosophy made the 

relation of the one to the manifold, of the changeable 

to the stable, the chief engrossing subject of all its 

meditations and discussions. The problems which 

concern us to-day are not exactly those that occupied 

the attention of our great-grandfathers. The lapse 

of a hundred years three generations of mortals- 

has introduced a very radical difference between the 

society of 1789 and that in which we live. Were a 

writer of the eighteenth century to reappear amongst 

us to-day he would be as hopelessly bewildered b\ 

current philosophical thought as a labourer of the 

Empire would be if suddenly dropped down into 

a modern factory. 

So also, the peculiar genius of the Middle Ages 

will be no longer found in the twentieth century. 

The mind of the thirteenth century betrayed a 

peculiar penchant for metaphysical and psychological 

investigations for metaphysics especially which 

represented the culminating point of human know 

ledge, as being the product of the highest effort of 

abstract human thought (49). In fact, certain 

metaphysical questions had such an all-absorbing 

interest for the thirteenth century philosophers that 

they turned up at almost every point in the discus 

sions of the schools : such, for example, the principle 

of individuation, the multiplicity of individuals in 

the same angelic species, the questions about essence 

and existence, about nature and suppositum, about 

matter and form. Like all the more remarkable 

and fertile epochs in philosophic thought, the 

thirteenth century devoted special attention to 

problems connected with the study of man. But 

its psychology was influenced by the metaphysical 

tendencies of the time : it showed a decided 

DOCTRINAL INNOVATIONS 215 

preference for questions in rational psychology, because 

these are for the most part closely allied with ontology. 

Thus, for instance, the problem of the origin of ideas, 

involving the theory of the two intellects, is connected 

with the ontological doctrine on actio and passio 

(89) ; the distinction between the soul and its 

faculties, particularly between intellect and will, 

is attached to the metaphysical teaching about 

operative power in contingent being (85). 

In recent times, on the other hand, two entirely 

new and original tendencies have asserted themselves 

in the treatment of all such problems : towards 

positivism and towards criticism. The great dogma 

of positivism the positivity, so to speak, of all human 

knowledge would limit the knowable to the experi- 

mentable. This thesis, notwithstanding the error 

it contains when formulated in such exclusive terms, 

has taught contemporary philosophy to pay the most 

scrupulous attention to all facts, and more particularly 

to those that lie on the confines of philosophy and 

the natural sciences. An emphatic inculcation 

of the importance of observation, internal and 

external, is the outcome of the tendency in question. 

Psychology is the department of contemporary 

philosophy in which it has received its fullest appli 

cation. There, experimental methods of procedure 

have been employed in the investigation of conscious 

and subconscious states, in studying the neural 

concomitant of psychic phenomena, and sensational 

and emotional life generally. 

Still more marked and widespread is the critical 

tendency, introduced by Kant into modern philo 

sophy. Before trusting to any natural cognitive 

endowment whatever, Kant raised this previous 

question : does the structure of our faculties render 

at all possible the application of our knowledge to 

an extra-mental world ? And we know how the 

Critique of Pure Reason enshrouded all our specu- 

216 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

lative convictions one after another in subjectivism. 

If we are to believe Kant, the object of our knowledge 

is a represented ivorJd and not a ivorld-in-itself ; for 

no thing-in-itself is knowable. The genius of Kant 

has cloven a twofold furrow in contemporary philo 

sophical thought. 

In the first place, he has been the direct inspiration 

of all subsequent systems of " critical " and " neo- 

critical " philosophy, both in the direction of trans 

cendental idealism and of transcendental realism. 

The idealists of the type of Fichte and Hegel- 

reduce all knowledge to a sort of mental poem, a 

product of a priori forms, and pronounce the thing- 

in-itself to be not merely unknowable , but simply 

non-existent. Realists on the other hand, like 

Schopenhauer or Herbart for example, admit the 

single fact of the existence of an unknowable, but 

persist in knowing nothing about it, and in confining 

all human knowledge to the subjective elaborations 

of our world of appearances. But be they realists 

or idealists, followers of Fichte or followers of Scho 

penhauer, whether they mingle much criticism or 

little criticism with their systems, and whatever 

other elements foreign to Kantism they may appro 

priate we may safely say that three-fourths at least 

of our contemporary philosophers have felt the 

influence of Kantian subjectivism in their studies 

on epistemology. 

Then over and above this first influence on our 

manner of regarding these problems, Kant has 

exercised yet another still more profound and far- 

reaching influence on the world of modern thought. 

Before solving the problem of certitude in the way 

just indicated, he stated the problem, and that in 

such a fashion, in language so insistent and 

peremptory, that it has become the problem par 

excellence of contemporary philosophy. Whether 

his answer be subject! vist or objectivist, every 

METAPHYSICS 217 

philosopher of the present day must face the trouble 

some question : " does the analysis of human know 

ledge give grounds for human certitude ? " 

Manifestly the current of thought in the twentieth 

century is not the same as it was in the thirteenth. 

Once more, then, what is to be the attitude of the new 

scholasticism ? Can it avoid the new ways where 

mind and thought are now in action, and pursue 

its solitary course along the beaten and abandoned 

paths of the Middle Ages ? No, certainly not ; 

for so it might go on interminably, without ever 

coming into contact with actual, modern life : a 

lonely and unnoticed wanderer, seven centuries 

behind its time. 

The recognition of modern trends of thought 

makes it incumbent on the new scholasticism to take 

up new positions without abandoning the old ones. 

It is in the doctrinal domain that we must accomplish 

the blending of the old and new, of tradition and 

innovation, that is to be characteristic of the new 

scholasticism vetera novis augere et perficere. A 

cursory glance over the various departments of 

philosophy will help to illustrate all this. 

SECTION 26. METAPHYSICS. 1 

128. In the Middle Ages no one doubted the 

reality of metaphysics. To-day, however, even a 

slight acquiantance with the various oscillations of 

philosophical systems will suffice to show how 

positivists and Neo-Kantians agree in blotting out 

of the book of philosophy the chapter formerly 

devoted to what was regarded as a department of 

the first importance. Either sense experience is 

1 For a full treatment of modern scholastic metaphysics, see fourth 

edition of Mercier s Ontologie (Lou vain, 1905). 

218 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

the sole criterion of certain knowledge (positivism), 

or, since the object of our knowledge is disfigured 

by our own mental structure (Kantism), there can 

be no possible question of a science that would reach 

through the phenomenon to grasp the r< ality beyond, 

and which would in the forcible language of Aristotle 

" consider Being as such, and the attributes of Being 

as such/" Some t lie re. are, indeed, who would 

substitute 1 for the older metaphysic a new metaphysic 

of the mind. A new review, established about ten 

years ago, called the Rcruc <fc metaphysique ct dc 

morale, has repeatedly championed the cause of this 

new sort of metaphysic. However, a doctrine does 

not change or abandon its phenomenalistic tendencies 

by arrogating to itself an ancient title with a well 

defined meaning. 

To this metaphysie of subjectivism the new schol 

asticism opposes an objective metaphysic constructed 

on the fundamental ontological doctrines of the 

Middle Ages (Section 1:2). We have no notion 

therefore of removing from our programme of ontology 

the questions so eagerly discussed by the doctors 

of the thirteenth century : the principle of individua- 

tion, the distinction between essence and existence, 

and so many others in which deep analysis can be 

easily separated from useless subtleties. But on 

the other hand we are well aware that all is not said 

and studied once we have exhausted the old medieval 

repertory. New problems have arisen, attractive 

problems too, problems which in any case press for 

an answer from philosophers who live in the twentieth 

century. And since the very legitimacy itself 

of the new scholastic metaphysic is called into 

question, it is precisely this problem that demands 

our first and best attention. To prejudge the whole 

question instead of meeting the attacks of the Hume- 

Kant-Comte coalition, or to meet them unprepared 

. III., i. 

METAPHYSICS 219 

and without counting the cost, would be following 

an absurd and compromising line of action. Yet 

such is the conduct of those who proclaim, without 

establishing, the rights of the Aristotelian meta- 

physic, or who are content to throw cheap ridicule 

on the attacks made upon it. 

129. "What is true of metaphysics in general is 

also true of most of its fundamental questions. Can 

we maintain the distinction between substance and 

accident without meeting the objections of pheno 

menism ? For Huxley and Taine the ego is not a 

substance, but " a bundle or collection of perceptions 

bound together by certain relations," 1 "a luminous 

sheaf consisting merely of the rockets that compose 

it," 2 just as corporeal substance is, in the well-known 

words of Stuart Mill, " a mere permanent possibility 

of sensations." 

It would be difficult to overrate the importance 

of the debate between phenomenalism and sub- 

stantialism. " There are very few notions with 

which modern thought is so engrossed as that of 

substance : friends and foes of the idea are alike 

convinced that the fate of metaphysics depends on 

the success or failure of substantialism. At first sight 

the very existence of any such dispute is matter for 

amazement. Can it be, we may well ask, that so 

many thinkers of the first order, like Hume, Mill, 

Spencer, Kant, Wundt, Paulsen, Comte, Littre, 

Taine, should have really denied, doubted or 

misunderstood the substantiality of things and of 

the ego ? Would they not have seen that they were 

running counter to ordinary good sense ? Then, 

on the other hand, is it credible that Aristotle, with 

all his genius, was the dupe of such a childish illusion 

as the phenomenists must needs accuse him of ? 

Or are we to believe that all those masterly and 

1 Huxley, Hume (London, Macmillan, 1886), p. 64. 

2 Tame, Dr. L intelligence, vol. I., pp. 77, et passim. 

220 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

truth-loving men, who have incorporated the Peri 

patetic distinction between substance and accident 

into the scholastic system and kept it there for 

centuries, were one and all egregiously deceived in 

the interpretation of an elementary truth of common 

sense ? Is there not good ground for suspecting 

that there must have been misleading quibblings 

and unfortunate misunderstandings on either side, 

if not on both sides ; whence undoubtedly originated 

mutual bandying of arguments and objections that 

were quite to no purpose ? " Misunderstandings 

do, in fact, exist on both sides : wrong notions as 

to the destructive scope of phenomenism, seeing that 

inasmuch as it allows an autonomous existence 

to the object of every perception it thereby admits, 

in a relative sense at all events, the possibility of 

self-subsisting realities ; false conceptions, too, of 

the scholastic theory as involving the gratuitous 

and erroneous belief that the human mind is capable 

of intuiting the specific determinations of natural 

substances. Here, as elsewhere, a careful comparison 

of theories is all that is needed to dissipate most of 

the difficulties and diminish considerably the distance 

that separates conflicting views/ 

The same applies to the doctrine of relativity 

or relativism, so ably defended, from quite a number 

of different standpoints, by Kant and Hegel in 

Germany, Comte and Renouvier in France, Locke, 

Hamilton, Mansel and Spencer in England. The 

old notion of the absolute, which was one of the 

keystones of scholasticism, will still be found capable 

of fixing many an archway in the new edifice, provided 

it be subjected to the limitations necessarily imposed 

on all human knowledge. 

What a crowd of questions may be opened up 

between the new scholasticism and contemporary 

1 Mercier, Onlologie (Louvain, 1902), p. 263. 

* For solution, see ibid., pp. 267 and foil. 

THEODICY 221 

thought ! The polyzoistic theories of an Edmund 

Perrier or a Durand de Gros, regarding the colonies 

of individual cells in the living organism, must arouse 

a new and actual interest in the traditional scholastic 

teaching about individual unity and personality ; 

contemporary pessimism states once more in new 

terms the old and ever-recurring problem of the 

existence of evil ; the contradictions and incon 

sistencies of all the modern philosophical offshoots 

of occasionalism will serve to emphasize once more 

the profound significance of Aristotle s most fruitful 

distinction between potentia and actus ; while recent 

controversies on determinism, and on the philosophy 

of the contingent, are sure to bring out anew the 

ample resources of Aristotelian teleology. A scru 

pulous testing of the old metaphysical theories in 

the light of modern facts and enquiries, so far from 

proving those theories worthless, will only help to 

show that they still hold their place in human science 

as some of the most glorious achievements of the 

Middle Ages. " Their metaphysics is a fully formed 

science, as was the logic of Aristotle in their own 

days. We may abridge or simplify or otherwise 

modify its details ; but we may not change either 

its fundamental principles or its leading conclusions 

unless we want something else instead of genuine 

metaphysics, that is to say, the science of the con 

ditions of Being, formally as such." 1 

SECTION 27. THEODICY/ 

130. Modern scholasticism can fearlessly proclaim 

the precious truths bequeathed to it by the Middle 

1 Domet de Verges, Essai de metaphysique positive (Paris, 1883). p. 330. 

- A neo-scholastic treatise on Theodicy is in course of preparation 

coming from the pen of Monseigneur Mercier. [The materials for this 

treatise are now embodied in the Compendium (2 vols.) of the larger 

Cours de philosophie issued by the Louvain Philosophical Institute. 

We hope that Cardinal Mercier may find leisure to complete and 

publish the treatise. Tr.] 

222 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

Ages on the existence and attributes of God. In 

its conception of the actux punts natural theology 

ascends as far as mortal may ascend towards the 

awe-inspiring infinity of the Eternal. 

Questions concerning the De.ity have been intro 

duced into contemporary philosophy from the two 

main centres of philosophical thought outside scho 

lasticism, that is to say, from Kantism and from 

positivism. All the systems born of Kant s philo 

sophy have encountered the " thing-in-itself," the 

unconditioned": some of them to deny it abso 

lutely, the others to declare our knowledge of it 

barren and deceptive. Materialists and positivists 

have found themselves face to face with the same, 

alternative : some of them, with ( 1 omte, have pro 

nounced that Supreme Being inaccessible to 

experience to be simply a chimera ; others, with 

Spencer, have banished beyond the frontiers of the 

knowable and outside the reach of science, that 

Absolute Being, to whom, or rather to which they 

nevertheless pay solemn homage. 

Hence a sort of introductory question that would 

have had no meaning in the Middle Ages must now 

tind its place in the opening pages of the modern 

scholastic theodicy : What are we to say of the agnostic 

attitude that, (rod being unknowable, it is absurd even 

to attempt to prove His existence / In other words, we 

must nowadays justify the possibility of theodicy 

as well as of metaphysics. 

131. Perhaps no one has compiled such an imposing 

array of difficulties against the scientific value of the 

traditional proofs for the existence of God, as the 

author of the tw First Principles." The widespread 

influence of the school for which Spencer is spokes 

man, makes it incumbent on the scholasticism of the 

twentieth century to examine those new weapons 

minutely, and to face the assaults of modern posi 

tivism. It will not now suffice to simply re-edit the 

THEODICY 223 

reasonings of the thirteenth century, nor even to 

reproduce the ostentatious defences formulated in the 

fourteenth when William of Occam began to question 

the demonstrative force of the Aristotelian arguments 

(70). Scholastics who would be guilty of adopting 

such tactics would be like a besieged garrison 

fortifying the northern side of their citadel while 

the enemy were actually opening a breach at the 

south. 

Then, too, we must, at the beginning of our theodicy 

substitute for all special conventional or traditional 

ideas of the Deity a conception derived by way of 

observation from the universal beliefs of mankind : 

that is the God Whose existence must be proved 

postponing for the moment the question as to how 

or how far that world-wide notion of the Supreme 

Being accords with the philosophical conception of 

the Divinity. Studies in the history of religions, 

and ethnological studies generally, can here be of 

considerable use to the philosopher ; they will have 

valuable materials to offer him. 

132. Nor are those the only new points to which 

special attention must be paid. Many of our 

contemporaries who acknowledge the existence of 

a God, have substituted for the transcendent and 

personal God, an immanent and impersonal one. 

Never before were there so many different forms of 

monism. Almost all the German philosophers w r ho 

acknowledge Kant in any way as most of them 

do are pantheists of some shade or other ; and that 

even though their several systems are so antagonistic 

that German post-Kantian philosophy has been not 

inaptly described as a " civil war of pantheism." 

Monism has assumed some novel and attractive 

features in modern philosophy ; it claims to offer 

a solution of problems heretofore insoluble, such, for 

example, as the mystery of the transmission of causal 

influence from an efficient cause to a receptive subject 

224 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

(Paulsen). Some even go so far as to say that the 

theory of a transcendent God is unconsciously based 

on a petitio principii : the last " idol " that awaits 

demolition. 

In the face of these facts and accusations the duty 

of scholasticism is clear : unless it repulses all such 

attacks it simply cannot and will not count as a 

contemporary system of philosophy. Those who are 

inclined to entertain pleasant illusions on this point 

might be just now profitably recommended to learn 

a little in the school of their own masters : monism 

of various shades was the dominant anti-scholastic 

system of philosophy from the ninth century down 

to the Renaissance, and the war waged against it 

during all those centuries constantly adapted itself 

to the needs of the time. The refutation of the 

ancient Greek monists like Parmenides is not the 

refutation of the materialistic pantheism of David 

of Dinant, nor of the emanation theory of Avicebron : 

nor will the arguments directed by St. Thomas 

against these latter furnish a fully effective answer 

to such men as Hegel, Fichte, Paulsen, or Deussen. 

An analysis of current theories on the nature and 

existence of God will introduce the modern scholastic 

to a number of other questions that are being actually 

discussed in books and periodicals : controversies 

on the infinite (so often confounded with the indefinite) ; 

the nature and foundations of possibility ; the 

question of exemplarism, etc. 

Indeed, there is reason to hope that the clash of 

the new r scholasticism with modern ideas will add a 

number of important chapters to natural theology ; 

and the sound and sober teaching of former days 

will be found to contrast to advantage with the wild 

and fanciful conceptions of the Deity, unfortunately 

so common in our own time. 

COSMOLOGY 225 

SECTION 28. COSMOLOGY. 1 

133. Here we are in a department where the new 

scholasticism will be busy : firstly, because the 

medieval errors in terrestrial and astronomical physics 

would seem to have prejudiced most modern scientists 

against all medieval teaching on the nature and 

properties of inorganic matter ; secondly, because 

we must here allow the phenomena to lead us step 

by step, and these seem to be ever growing in number 

and complexity according as they are probed and 

analyzed under the magic influence of the sciences 

of observation. 

In fact, the philosophy of nature at the present day 

necessarily presupposes a knowledge of physics, 

chemistry, geology, crystallography and mineralogy. 

" Where the natural sciences leave off there the 

domain of cosmology commences."* For, a very 

considerable number of scientific facts call for some 

explanation of the origin, nature and destiny of 

material substance. Such, for example, among 

those carefully selected by Professor Nys, are the 

atomic weights of the elements, chemical affinity, 

atomicity or quantivalence, chemical combinations 

and analyses with the thermal phenomena accompany 

ing them, the constant recurrence of the chemical 

elements and compounds ; the crystalline structure of 

matter, isomorphism and polymorphism ; all the 

phenomena of heat, light and sound, together with 

the electric, magnetic and radio-active properties of 

bodies ; the kinetic theory of gases, the law of 

gravitation and the law of the conservation of 

energy. 

1 For a full and detailed study of cosmology from the neo-scholastic 

standpoint, see the work of Professor Nys, Cosmologie (Louvain, 1903, 

2nd edit., 1906). 

2 Nys, Cosmologie, p. 13. 

226 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

134. Here, truly, are ample materials for a thorough 

reconstruction of the ancient physics. A recon 

struction ? But are the essential principles of 

scholasticism at all capable of assimilating the new 

facts, or of offering a philosophical explanation of 

the conquests of modern science ? In the face of 

these facts how will it faro, with the theories of 

matter and form, of substantial change, of specific 

distinctions between the various bodies and between 

their various properties, of the rhythmic evolution of 

forms, and of the finality of the cosmos (Section 14) ? 

These venerable theories sound all the more out-of- 

date because neither the great cosmological conception 

now in vogue mechanical atomism nor its less 

powerful rival dynamism have preserved to 

modern times even a single particle of the ancient 

scholastic teaching. 

o 

And yet what a real surprise there is in store for 

those who undertake to interpret the new phenomena 

in the light of the old principles ! Professor Nys, 

after a careful examination of the various depart 

ments of physical science at its present stage of 

development, has reached a conclusion well calculated 

to give pause to modern philosophers : the conclusion 

which he embodies and supports in his Cosmologie 

that no hypothesis of the present day has a better 

interpretation of the facts of physical nature to offer 

us than scholasticism has. How, for example, are 

we to account for chemical affinity, or for the constant 

recurrence of the same, chemical species in nature, 

without appealing to a finality that must be intrinsic to 

the constitution and activities of those species ? Is not 

the great law of crystallography that " each chemical 

species has its own characteristic crystalline form " 

a faithful expression of the scholastic principle that 

in the inorganic world there are specific tvpes which 

exhibit distinctive and inalienable properties ? In 

general, does not an impartial study of the facts of 

COSMOLOGY 227 

general physics point unmistakably to the existence 

of qualities, in the Thomistic sense of the word ? 

135. Nor is that all. Not only is the new schol 

astic cosmology constructive in the best sense, it is 

also destructive of rival systems. If it is right, 

atomism is wrong. There is, no doubt, a seductive 

charm in the very simplicity of the atomic hypothesis, 

which would reduce the matter of the whole visible 

universe to one homogeneous mass, and the vast and 

ever- varying panorama of its manifold activities to 

simple local motion. But it would appear that the 

explicative or interpretative value of the theory 

must be very considerably discounted. Apart 

altogether from its philosophical presuppositions, 

which, as can be easily shown, are not entirely free 

from latent contradictions and inconsistencies, there 

are in chemistry, physics and mechanics, certain facts 

such as the constancy of the thermal phenomena 

that accompany chemical changes, the phenomenon 

of universal gravitation and the fact of the con 

servation of energy, with which mechanical atomism 

so far from explaining them turns out on critical 

analysis to be really incompatible. 

And these failures are felt all the more keenly as 

natural science progresses. So much so, that they have 

occasioned among certain men of science who are 

also betimes philosophers, and, indeed, necessarily so, 

we would say, judging from their vast and varied 

knowledge a movement of reaction against atomism : 

a fact whose far-reaching significance scholastics will 

not be slow to realize. Professor Mansion of the 

University of Ghent has clearly shown 1 that a series 

of articles which appeared over the well-known name 

of Professor Duhem of Bordeaux, may be taken as 

marking a turning-point in the evolution of cosmo- 

logical theories, initiating an open and candid return 

to scholastic conceptions. Professor Duhem has 

1 In the Revue des questions scientifiques, July, 1901, p. 50. 

228 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

since developed and confirmed his views in a remark 

able book 1 of a synthetic or philosophical tendency, 

many of whose pages will give food for serious 

reflection to scientists no less than to philosophers. 

The chapter in which the author speaks of qualities 

is specially interesting and instructive. Take, for 

example, these frank and significant declarations : 

" The attempt to reduce all the properties of bodies 

to fi<mre Mid movement must be a futile undertaking, 

O <"" 

because not only would it involve unmanageable 

if not unimaginable complications, but what is 

far worse it would be grossly incompatible with the 

nature of material things. We are simply compelled, 

therefore, to admit into our Phvsics something else 

. o 

in addition to the purely quantitative elements of 

which geometry treats; we must allow that matter 

has qualities. Even at the risk of being reproached 

for returning to the old rirtntcx occultcr, we Feel 

ourselves forced to regard as a primary and irreducible 

quality that by which a body is hot, or bright, or 

electric, or magnetic; in a word, we must abandon 

the conceptions and hypotheses that scientists have 

been incessantly making and unmaking, in the 

spirit, and since the time, of Descartes, and begin 

to attach our theories to the fundamental conceptions 

of the peripatetic Physics." After which the author 

goes on to ask : Will not this retrograde step com 

promise the whole vast body of doctrine organized 

by physical scientists since they shook off the yoke 

of the school ? Must not the most fruitful methods 

of modern science at once fall into disuse ? Convinced 

that everything in corporeal nature was reducible 

to figure and movement as conceived by the geo 

metricians, that all was purely quantitative, physical 

scientists have long since introduced measure and 

number into every department of physical research ; 

all the properties of bodies are become magnitudes ;, 

1 L evolution de la mecanique rationellc, Paris, 1903. 

COSMOLOGY 229 

all laws, algebraical formulas ; all theories, chains 

of theorems. And are we now to be asked to sacrifice 

the marvellously powerful assistance we have derived 

from the employment of numerical symbols in our 

reasoning processes? " To which questions he 

gives the answer that : " Such a sacrifice is by no 

means necessary. To give up mechanical explana 

tions does not mean to give up mathematical Physics. 

Numbers can be used to represent the various degrees 

of a magnitude capable of increase or diminution ; 

and the transition from the magnitude to the number 

that is made to stand for it we call measuring. But 

numbers can also be made to stand for the various 

degrees of intensity of a quality. Such extension of 

the concept of measure, by which number is made to 

symbolize a thing that is not quantitative, would no 

doubt have shocked and astonished the peripatetics 

of former times. But that just reveals the real, 

genuine progress, the abiding and really fruitful 

conquest for which we are indebted to the seventeenth 

century scientists and their followers ; in their 

attempt to substitute everywhere quantity for quality 

they failed ; but their efforts were not altogether 

without results, for they brought to light this truth 

of inestimable value : That it is possible to deal with 

physical qualities in the language of algebra." From 

all of which emerges this interesting conclusion : 

ic Physics will reduce the theory of the phenomena 

of inanimate Nature to the consideration of a certain 

number of qualities ; but this number it will aim 

at making as small as possible. "Whenever a new 

phenomenon appears Physical Science will do its 

utmost to find a place for it among the known 

qualities ; and only when it has finally failed to do 

so will it resign itself to the admission of a new quality 

into its theories, of a new variable into its equations." 

The testing of what we have ventured to describe 

as the harmony of science with the old scholasticism, 

230 MODERN" SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

would seem to be specially interesting here in 

cosmology in its application to this particular theory 

of quality ; it is very likely to throw additional light 

on the general observations made above regarding 

the possibility of such harmony : this is our excuse 

for making such long quotations from the work of 

Professor Duhem. 1 

SECTION 20. GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY.* 

136. The numerous sciences which might be 

grouped as anthropological cellular biology, physio 

logy, histology, embryology, etc. have pushed back 

almost indefinitely the horizons of this continent 

which the Cartesian psychologists of the seventeenth 

century were congratulating themselves on having 

explored so thoroughly. Now, as regards the 

" anthropological " or " human " problems raised by 

the progress of these sciences, the exaggerated 

spiritualism of a Descartes or a Cousin traces of 

which are still to be found in certain educational 

centres must logically disclaim all right to meddle 

with such problems at all. And positivism, on the 

other hand, has been in the habit of claiming a sort 

of monopoly in these studies ; approaching them, 

too, with its well-known agnostic prejudices, and 

confining itself to the mere accumulation of facts 

and experiments instead of making these latter 

subservient to the ulterior study of the human 

substance. The new scholasticism, however, thanks 

to its fruitful theory of the substantial union of soul 

and body, " is in possession both of a systematic 

1 As for dynamism, so ably defended by Boscovich, Carbonelle, 

Him, Palmieri, its star has speedily paled. The denial of formal 

extension, and the denial of a passive element in corporeal things, 

are positions more and more difficult to defend as natural science 

progresses. 

2 We may refer the reader to Mercier s monumental work, La 

Psychologic, already (1903) in its sixth edition. 

GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 231 

body of doctrines and also of an organic framework 

quite capable of receiving and assimilating the ever 

increasing products of the sciences of observation." 1 

In truth, when we reflect on the march of scientific 

progress, and on the crowds of new and pretentious 

theories that are being continually put forward in 

explanation of newly discovered facts, we cannot 

suppress our astonishment at the reserved and cautious 

attitude of the old Aristotelian and scholastic 

psychology. To realize it fully we should have to 

explain in detail the position of the new scholasticism 

in regard to the problems raised by contemporary 

psychology. For this, however, we must be content 

to refer the reader to treatises on neo-scholastic 

psychology ; here we can hardly do more than 

enumerate in a passing way the questions that are of 

greatest prominence and importance. These have 

reference, some to the activities, others to the nature 

of man. 

137. The elementary vital phenomena brought to 

light by cellular biology have become the starting- 

point of psychology. It is, however, from observing 

the manifestations of sense life that psychological 

science has derived most profit thanks to the many 

remarkable discoveries made by physiology regarding 

the structure and functions of the nervous system. 

The new scholastic psychology has found in the 

medieval teaching a most appropriate framework of 

broad, leading principles made to order, one would 

almost say for the interpretation of the latest facts 

in connection with unconscious mental states, with 

cerebral localization, with the proper and common 

sensibles, and especially with the objectivity of our 

muscular and tactual sensations. The various 

phenomena of the association of psychical states, 

l [Op. cit., Preface, p. i. Richet (Revue scientifique, t. LI., 1893), 

and Doring (Zeitschrift f. Psych, u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane, 1898, 

pp. 222-224), agree in recognizing this vitality in the new scholastic 

psychology. 

232 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

so ably analysed by English psychologists, with its 

manifold applications to language, to the training 

of animals, to hypnotism, etc. ; and all the recent 

minute analyses of instinct, sense memory, the 

passions, spontaneous vital motions, etc. ; entirely 

confirm traditional scholastic teaching on the cogni 

tive and appetitive states of sense life. Xotably the 

important scholastic thesis that sense knowledge of 

whatsoever kind reveals the particular and contingent 

is sustained and corroborated by all recent 

researches. 

But as against positivism, it is now more necessary 

than it has ever been in the past to establish fully 

and clearlv the fxxottidt distinction between the 

sensation and the idea. The objections of a Berkeley 

that the process of abstraction is chimerical, and of 

a, Taine confounding the class-name with the idea 

o 

and the composite image with what he describes as 

the so-called universal concept must be fairly faced, 

examined and answered at any cost. Therein will 

the new scholastic ideology show itself more fertile 

and powerful than either the systems based on 

sensism where all knowledge is reduced to sensation, 

or the ultra-spiritualist psychologies (of Descartes, 

the ontologists, etc.), where the part played by 

sensation in the genesis of our ideas is either unduly 

diminished or entirely ignored. 

The study of the will involves a discussion of all 

the arguments urged by determinists against human 

liberty ; and that of itself implies some degree of 

acquaintance with practically all contemporary 

systems of thought. Reason and liberty, so radically 

distinct from sensibility and instinct, set up an 

insuperable barrier between man and beast : an 

assertion which, however, by no means denies that 

the higher and lower faculties exert a mutual influence 

on one another ; for the solidarity of sense and reason 

is abundantly manifest in waking, sleeping and 

GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 233 

dreaming, in the normal life of the mind as well as 

in hallucinations and insanity ; and, furthermore, 

the close union of sense appetite with rational will 

can alone explain the phenomena of the passions, 

and the abnormal and morbid states of the will 

itself. 

Modern philosophers should be interested if not 

surprised to see what a simple and adequate explana 

tion of all these phenomena of interdependence 

between sense life and rational life the new scholas 

ticism has to offer us in its theory on the constitution 

of the composite nature of man. We pass, therefore, 

to the problems regarding man s nature. 

138. Neither the recent controversies on the nature 

of life, like that, for example, between the mechanical 

organicists and the vitalists of the school of Montpellier, 

nor the evolutionary hypotheses of a Weissmann or a 

Darwin, have in any degree discredited the time- 

honoured definition of Aristotle : " ^^n t* svrtXe^eia jj 

vrpuTT} ffufj^arog (pvoixov duvdfttt ^ur,v e^MTOZ ; anima 6St pertectlO 

prima primusque actus corporis naturalis organis 

praediti." ! The functional unity of the composite 

animal being, the manifest solidarity of its various 

forms of energy, confirm the theory of the sub 

stantial union of the animal body with the vital 

principle ; nor is the divisibility of the living 

organism an insuperable objection against this theory. 

The psychology of the Middle Ages will be found to 

be at least quite as capable as any other system, of 

explaining the vital phenomena of the vegetable and 

animal kingdoms. At the same time it will give 

a decidedly better explanation of the various facts of 

human life. If man is in substance both corporeal 

and spiritual he ought naturally to be the seat both 

of organic and of immaterial or spiritual activities ; 

and even the highest manifestations of his psychic 

life should reveal a functional dependence on the 

1 De Anima, ii., i. 

234 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

nervous system. Neither the extreme Cartesian 

spiritualism which makes the body a mere encum 

brance to the soul, nor the occasionalism of a 

Malebranche or the pre-established harmony of a 

Leibnitz, nor the attempts of positivists to reduce 

the psychic fact to an obverse or inverse of the nervous 

phenomenon, nor even the more recent theory of 

psycho-physical parallelism, can offer us any adequate 

or satisfactory explanation of the unity of man and 

the solidarity of his acts. 1 But the new scholastic 

teaching will throw an important light on more 

than one of the leading chapters of contemporary 

psychology : for instance, the whole doctrine of 

character, and of personality with its " variations," 

is subordinate to the main principles concerning the 

substantial unity of man. 

Again, the new scholasticism will have to examine 

the urgent objections of materialism against the 

spirituality and simplicity of the human soul : 

objections drawn from the dependence of even our 

highest rational activities on the corporeal organism. 

Besides which there are the questions as to the 

soul s origin and immortal destiny, etc. So that 

on the whole the new scholasticism will have to 

subject the psychological teaching of the medieval 

doctors to a careful and thorough process of modern 

adaptation and enlargement. 

139. Nor is this all. So rapid has been the pro 

gress of psychological studies in modern times that 

the branches of the parent stem have begun to show 

a vitality of their own. Of these new sciences 

some are purely psychological, as, for instance, 

criteriology. Others draw more or less from 

independent philosophical sources, like esthetics ; or 

from the natural, physical, or social sciences, as is 

the case with psycho-physics, didactics, pedagogics, 

l [Cf. f MercieT, r Les origines de la psychologic contetnporaine (Louvain, 

1897). * 

CRITERIOLOGY 235 

folk-psychology and the numerous other forms of 

applied psychology. 

SECTION 30. CRITERIOLOGY. l 

140. Scholasticism has treated the criteriological 

problem mainly from the deductive point of view, 

deriving a synthetic theory on certitude from divine 

exemplarism combined with a metaphysical teleology 

(72, 68). But the present-day scholastic must meet 

the question of the validity of knowledge in the 

domain of the analysis of that knowledge itself, and 

must aim at finding an inductive solution for it : the 

critical turn taken by modern philosophy from 

Descartes to Kant, and even more decidedly since 

Kant s time, will leave no aspect of contemporary 

intellectual problems unexamined (127). 

Now, the certitude of human knowledge, " being 

a modality that affects the cognitive faculty, should 

find its ultimate explanation in the nature of the 

human soul. Criteriology, therefore, springs natur 

ally from the study of the soul, that is to say, from 

psychology. It is only confusion of thought and 

misuse of language that could have assigned to it a 

place in the logical treatise and designated it by the 

curious though now familiar title of real logic. 

It is easy to see that nothing less than the whole 

scholastic system is at stake in the controversy about 

the objectivity of our intellectual judgments. The 

traditional scholastic theories on truth (logical and 

ontological), and notably the division of propositions 

into those in necessary matter (per se notce) and those 

in contingent matter (per aliud notce), theories so well 

known to the doctors of the thirteenth century- 

can serve as the foundation of quite a new and 

1 See Mercier, Criteriologie generate, (fifth edition, 1906). A volume 

on Criteriologie speciale is promised. 

3 Mercier, op. cit., p. 4 (fourth edition). 

236 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

complete scholastic criteriology. Our venerable 

master and colleague, Monseigneur Mercier, who is 

rightly recognized as the founder of this special 

department, has admirably shown the latent resources 

of these old doctrines, and has made successful use 

of them in vindicating a rational type of dogmatism 

both against the methodic doubt of Descartes and 

against the exaggerated dogmatism of Balrnes 

o 

and Tongiorgi. 

141. Certain truths (or judgments) have for their 

object relations between objective concepts, abstract 

ing altogether from the existence of the things 

conceived : the objective manifestation of these 

relations to the mind is of the ideal- order, as in the 

so-called exact or rational sciences. But these 

truths are in turn intended to be applied to a real, 

extramental world ; by which application the laws of 

these ideal relations become the laws of things. 

Hence a twofold epistemological problem : that of 

the objectivity <>f propositions of the ideal order, and 

that of the objective recdity of our concepts. 

The supreme and ultimate motive for our certitude 

about immediate propositions of the ideal order (and 

consequently about propositions deduced from these) 

cannot possibly be found in any extrinsic test of the 

kind to which De Bonald, De Lamennais, Pascal or 

Cousin have had recourse ; neither can it be found 

in an exclusively subjective criterium like that offered 

by Kant in his second Critique, and by the neo-critical 

theories sprung from that part of the German philo 

sopher s innovations ; those principles of the ideal 

order must have their final and fundamental motive 

in an objective, intrinsic criterium, i.e. in the evidence 

of their truth. 1 And that is precisely why the new 

scholastic criteriology must study in every detail, 

and encounter point by point those masterful 

contents of the Critique of Pure Reason, in which 

1 Op. cit., p. 20 1 (fourth edition). 

CRITERIOLOGY 237 

Kant is led to fix upon a blind synthesis, necessi 

tated by the structure of our mental faculties, as 

the sole explaining reason of the necessity and 

universality of those propositions which we hold for 

absolutely certain. Even the first principles of the 

mathematical sciences, such as 7 + 5 = 12, Kant 

would hold to be the product of an a priori synthesis. 

Then, on the other hand, the universality of 

propositions of the ideal order must also be defended 

against the attacks of contemporary positivism, 

which flatters itself that it has demolished the 

doctrine of the existence of abstract concepts and 

shown them all to be reducible to mere sense 

experiences. 

142. The second great problem of epistemology is 

even of more consequence than the first ; for what 

would it avail to have universal and necessary 

judgments, motived by objective relations revealed to 

our minds between subject and predicate, if this whole 

object were merely and purely representable, and 

corresponded to nothing in the real, extramental 

order of actual or possible existences ? The Kantian 

phenomenism which proclaims our inability to attain, 

by means of our concepts, to the thing-in-itself, is 

a logical corollary from the synthetic-a-priori theory 

of judgment. Kant pronounced himself all at once 

against the real as well as against the ideal objectivity 

of judgment. 

In this all-important discussion a very vital 

doctrine of the new scholasticism is at stake : the 

legitimacy of the process of abstraction. What we 

have to show clearly is this, that in forming our 

concepts from the data of sense we remain throughout 

in permanent contact with the realities of nature. 

For if we do, then " the intelligible forms which 

become the first subjects of our judgments are 

endowed with a real objectivity ; in other words, 

the intelligible object of these forms is not only a 

238 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

representable object but, more than that, it is also 

a thing-in-itself, actual or possible." 

It is obviously upon the real objectivity of our 

sensations that the force of this reasoning depends ; 

and to that point we shall refer again presently. 

Here we may be allowed to draw attention in passing 

to the remarkable renewal of interest which the 

problems of modern philosophy have aroused in the 

venerable old question of the universals now having 

a noble revenge for all the ignorant abuse and ridicule 

so often heaped upon it. The first great, actual 

question of criteriology is in very truth none other 

than that of determining whether the moderate 

realism of Aristotle and St. Thomas is a sound 

philosophical attitude as against the nominalism of 

Hume, Mill, Taine, etc., on the one hand, and the 

exaggerated realism of the ontologists and of a group 

of German pantheists on the other. How plain it 

appears from all this that modern and contemporary 

philosophy has gradually developed into the one 

vast and deep criteriological problem of the meaning 

and value of human knowledge. 

143. After the study of certitude in general comes 

the study of the certitude of at least the more important 

among our separate and individual convictions. These 

form the subject-matter of special criteriology. First 

in importance comes the investigation into the 

objectivity of our external sensations. Setting 

out from the incontestible presence in consciousness 

of a sense datum or material in the shape of a repre 

sentative impression of which we are manifestly 

not ourselves the creators, the earlier Kantists, and 

after them Schopenhauer and Herbart, inferred the 

existence of a noumenal world as the cause of those 

impressions. It is by an analogous application of 

the principle of causality that modern scholasticism 

argues from our consciousness of passivity in sense 

perception to the reality of an extramental object 

ESTHETICS 239 

which, engenders in our faculties that peculiar repro 

duction of itself called a sensation. Consciousness 

itself, enlightened by mature reflection and reasoning, 

can alone meet the many objections of contemporary 

positivism against the existence of an external world. 

Each and every distinct source and form of know 

ledge must find its justification in special criteriology : 

there the scientific syllogism as understood by Aris 

totle and the great teachers of the Middle Ages will 

be vindicated against the attacks of such men as 

Mill and Bain who make out all deduction to be 

either a solemn farce or a petitio principii ; induction 

will be placed on solid, scientific foundations, and 

carefully distinguished from the positivist summing 

up of particular facts into a collective proposition ; 

neither memory, nor belief in authority whether 

human or divine, nor even consciousness itself, can 

give us certitude, except with the aid of certain 

safeguards and guarantees that need to be carefully 

and accurately determined and analyzed in this 

department. 

SECTION 31. ESTHETICS/ 

144. The Middle Ages produced no special treatises 

on the study of the beautiful. The ideas entertained 

by the medieval scholastics on the subject are found 

scattered through their metaphysics and psychologies, 

or in commentaries like those on the treatise of 

Pseudo-Denis De Nominibus Divinis. 

Esthetics did not make its first appearance as a 

distinct branch of philosophy until after the time of 

Leibnitz. Etymologically, it should be the title 

of the philosophical science of sensation (aiaOavopaii, 

sentire), and the term was used in this meaning by 

1 A philosophical science of esthetics conceived after the spirit of 

the new scholasticism, remains yet to be constituted. In the present 

Section we merely outline the general plan of the questions which we 

conceive to fall properly within its scope. 

240 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

Kant in describing as the Transcendental Esthetic his 

doctrine on the application of the space and time forms 

to the materials of sensibility. Baumgartcn was the 

first to employ the term " esthetic " to designate the 

science of the beautiful. Xor was he thereby doing 

violence to the etymology of the word, for in his time 

the science of the beautiful meant almost exclusively 

the science of our sensorv and emotional states. 

145. But that narrow and inadequate conception 

of esthetics has nothing to recommend it. For 

modern scholasticism as for the Middle Ages the idea 

of the beautiful is complex; it is "an impression 

caused in us by an object capable of producing it/ 

Esthetics ought, therefore, to comprise two, or even 

three, distinct groups of questions : about the 

subjective elements of the beautiful, about its objec 

tive elements, and about the correspondence of the 

former with the latter. Understood in this way, 

esthetics would represent a mixed science in the 

general classification of philosophical studies : it 

would borrow from psychology the requisite materials 

for explaining the impression or perception of the 

beautiful ; and from metaphysics whatever belongs 

to the constitution of those things to which we attri 

bute the prerogative of beauty. Parallel with this 

treatment of general questions it would also embrace 

certain special branches devoted to the study of 

the great leading manifestations of the beautiful 

both in nature and in art. Let us take a glance at 

those various departments. 

146. The subjective impression is an element 

essential to the beautiful. This impression is a 

double phenomenon ; it can be analysed into a 

cognitive perception and a specific gratification or 

enjoyment. Of course, every conscious activity that 

is exercised within certain limits of intensity and 

duration can be a source of pleasure ; but not 

every source of pleasure is esthetic, as the positivists 

ESTHETICS 241 

seem to think and to teach. Esthetic pleasure is 

the epiphenomenon of a perceptive or cognitive 

activity (quce visa placent) ; and if we examine the 

objective factors (147) of this pleasure we shall find 

that the perception in question must be of the intel 

lectual order. The enjoyment of esthetic pleasure 

resides formally in a disinterested contemplation, 

a " superfluous " activity (Spencer), a " play " 

impulse without any direct and immediate utility 

(Schiller). Moreover, in the perception of sensible 

beauty, the abstraction which conditions intellectual 

apprehension springs from the agreeable feeling 

in the sensations, and thus the sense pleasure is 

always closely associated with the intellectual. 

The contemplation of the beautiful is the cause 

of a very special and indefinable sort of tranquility, 

calm, peace. The esthetic enjoyment of sensible 

beauty is likewise a harmonious pleasure ; it diffuses 

itself over man s whole conscious life : but it 

could not be harmonious did it not respect the 

fundamental hierarchy established among man s 

various mental faculties. 

147. The object of this subjective perception is 

the perfect order of the thing perceived (unde pul- 

chrum in debita proportione consistit). But perfect 

order in a thing implies a multiplicity of parts 

(integritas, magnitudo), the relative importance of 

each depending on its functional value compared 

with the whole (debita proportio, cequalitas numerosa, 

commensuratio partium). It is to the formal con 

stituent (the forma) of any being or thing that we 

must refer the factors of its intrinsic orderliness, 

for the forma is the principle of its unity, the thing 

being then perfect when the arrangement of its parts 

realizes fully and adequately the constitution 

demanded by its nature (64). 

148. The esthetics of the ancient Greek philosophers 

investigated almost exclusively the objective elements 

242 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

of beauty, either confining their attention to objects 

which revealed proportion and harmony in their 

constitution (Platonic and Aristotelian school), or 

considering beauty as a transcendental attribute 

of Being as such., and therefore as abiding in 

simple as well as in composite things (Neo-Platonic 

school). 

Modern esthetics, on the other hand, carried to 

1 he opposite extreme by most of its representatives, 

would have beauty to be a purely subjective pheno 

menon, either the outcome of an a priori form 

(Kantian and post- Kantian schools), or of some 

semi-conscious or subconscious activity (Leibnitzian 

school), or of any and every agreeable or useful 

sensation whatsoever (positivism, utilitarian 

esthetics). 

The superiority oi the, new scholastic esthetics 

arises from the close correlation it establishes between 

the orderliness of the tiling and the impression it is 

calculated to produce 1 in us. It completes the 

Greek by the modern point of view, and reciprocal Iv. 

It also insists that the objective constituents of order 

must be excitants of a kind conformable to the con 

templative acticthj of the being that apprehends it. 

It is only by analyzing this causal relation that we 

can mark off the complex notion of beauty from the, 

purely metaphysical notion of perfection : a vast 

multiplicity of elements may conceivably be necessary 

for the objective perfection of a thing, but it would 

mar the work of art by fatiguing the faculties of 

perception ; for the objective integrity of a perfect 

thing, the real, physical presence of all its elements 

without exception is essential ; for its esthetic 

integrity, on the contrary, all that is needed is that 

the spectator have the wi impression " of integrity, and 

the deliberate omission or bare outlining of certain 

parts is a trick well known to artists, by which they 

arouse the contemplative activity of the auditor 

ESTHETICS 243 

or spectator and thus make him a sort of sharer in 

the creative work itself. The claritas pulchri, so 

often spoken of by the scholastics, is an admirable 

expression of this comprehensive teaching, for it 

has in view that " property of things in virtue of 

which the objective elements of their beauty, that 

is to say, their order, harmony, proportion, reveal 

themselves clearly to the intelligence, and so elicit 

its prolonged and easy contemplation." 1 

149. The efficient agencies productive of the work 

of art are the creative faculties of man chiefly 

imagination and intelligence subserved by the rules 

or technique of each particular department. This 

technique is brought to bear on certain sense materials 

(the material cause of the work of art) and so fashions 

them as to realize some ideal (the formal cause of 

the work of art). This artists ideal is no mere 

misty dream, but a concrete image in which he has 

embodied all the objective elements he aims at 

realizing in his work, and has so embodied them that 

the functional role of each will contribute to the 

total impression he wishes to produce. This 

impression will depend on the resplendentia formcc, 

that is, on the " form " made to shine forth from 

the artist s work (63). Whether it be the " sub 

stantial form " of the being, or some " accidental 

form " that the artist has chosen to body forth 

(what Taine calls the caractere dominateur), the more 

prominently he makes this unifying principle stand 

out and " shine forth " resplendere the fuller, 

richer and easier will be our knowledge of his master 

piece, and the more powerful the impression it will 

make upon us. Thus we see the verification of what a 

scholastic, nourished by the wholesome doctrines 

of the thirteenth century, has written on this subject : 

" Pulchrum in ratione sua plura concludit : scilicet 

1 M. De Wulf, Etudes historiques sur I esthetique de saint Thomas 

d Aquin (Louvain, 1896), p. 28. 

244 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

splendorem forma? substantialis vel accident alis supra 

paries materuo proportionatas et terminatas." 1 

If this philosophy of art is to be fruitful it must 

spring in the first instance from the close study of 

the best masterpieces. Art criticism and art history 

contain the materials from which the philosopher 

of esthetics must abstract his theories ; they are to 

esthetics what the sciences of inorganic nature are 

to cosmology, and the biological sciences to 

psychology. We may here copy the example, of 

positivism, which approaches the study of art pro 

blems by the study of masterpieces. The method 

is entirely in harmony with the peripatetic ideology. 

It will also prove- a valuable test for the new scholastic 

esthetic, for if the principles of the latter are true 

they will he able to interpret and to justify the 

rules and canons followed bv the great masters. 

Then, there remains the final cause of art. Its 

essential aim is of course the production of the 

beautiful, but we may inquire whether it has not 

also some extrinsic mission : Has it a social or 

educative significance ? Should it come out among 

the people or remain the exclusive privilege of a 

coterie of initiated worshippers ? How can we deny 

it all influence on the moral life of the individual 

and the community, provided we keep clearly before 

us the distinction between the finis opcris and the 

finis ope rant is ? These, however, are questions of 

ethics and sociology rather than of esthetics. 

150. To conclude : Esthetics has its place clearly 

marked out in any comprehensive study of the new 

scholasticism ; it is a natural offshoot from psycho 

logy and metaphysics. A thorough and modern 

scholastic treatment of it should yield an adequate 

and satisfactory explanation of the many modern 

problems that have grown up around the concept 

of the beautiful ; therein shall we find yet another 

JL Opusc. DC Pulchro ct Bono, ed. Uccelli, p. 29. 

OTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL BRANCHES 245 

illustration of the striking cohesion and marvellous 

elasticity of the great organic doctrines of Middle 

Age scholasticism. 

SECTION 32. OTHER BRANCHES OP A PSYCHOLOGICAL 

CHARACTER. 

151. Psycho -physics, or psycho -physiology, or 

physiological physiology, or experimental psycho 

logy 1 as it is variously called, is a very modern 

science, based on external as well as internal obser 

vation, and having for its object the discovery of 

the relations between the phenomena of consciousness 

and their physiological concomitants. Attaining 

to a remarkably sudden popularity among men of 

science, who are naturally partial to those half- 

psychological, half-physiological forms of research, 

the new science has already made the rounds of 

Europe and America. At the present time it has 

chairs and laboratories in most universities. 

Now, no excessively spiritualist system of philo 

sophy which regards the immaterial soul of man 

as entirely independent of his body, can consistently 

give any countenance to this whole department of 

research ; while, on the other hand it fits in admirably 

with the spirit of the new scholasticism, and especially 

with its cardinal psychological doctrine of the 

substantial union of spirit with matter in the unity 

of composite human nature (137, 138).* 

The conclusions formulated by Weber and Fechner 

on the quantitative relation of the sense -stimulus to 

the intensity of sensation, and their further verifi 

cation by Wundt ; the results brought to light by 

1 A scholastic psycho-physiology is as yet scarcely outlined. 

- [Cf. art. by Dr. Gasquet in the Dublin Review, April, 1882, on 

41 St. Thomas Physiological Psychology." Tr.] 

246 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

experiments made with such instruments as the 

dynamometer and the plethismograph ; the obser 

vations made with regard to the duration of psychic 

phenomena and the limits of conscious sensibility : 

these, and a whole series of cognate investigations 

undertaken within the past ten or fifteen years and 

chronicled in numerous reviews, treatises and mono 

graphs, are all (mite in accord with the spirit 

of modern scholasticism, and even amount to a. 

striking vindication of its psychology. 

What, then, could be more natural on our part than 

to extend a sincere welcome to these " new ways " 

and to contribute our quota to researches that 

are sure to enrich our philosophy and reflect credit 

upon it ? 

Scientific men of the most widely divergent schools 

of thought have frequently noticed the remarkable 

plasticity of medieval psychology. We need only 

instance the testimony of one of the well-known 

founders of the science of psycho-physics, Professor 

Wundt of Leipzig, who states, towards the end of 

his Principle* of Physiological Psychology, that the 

results of his researches do not fit in with materialism, 

nor with Platonic or Cartesian dualism ; and that 

the only theory which attaches psychology to biology 

and thereby presents itself as a plausible metaphysical 

conclusion to experimental psychology, is the theory 

of Aristotelian animism. 1 

152. Very closely connected with psychology we 

find a huge number of problems relating to the 

education and instruction of the young. To draw 

out the intelligence and form the character, we must 

be thoroughly conversant with whatever in any way 

influences the normal functioning of the mental 

activities. Psychology is, in fact, the very ground 

work of didactics and pedagogy. And as there is 

zi igc dcr physiologischen psychologie, v. ii., p. 540. 

OTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL BRANCHES 247 

a new scholastic psychology, so will there be new 

scholastic didactics and a new scholastic pedagogy. 1 

It is customary nowadays to distinguish between 

didactics, or the science of instruction, and pedagogy, 

or the science of education. And such a line of 

demarcation exactly coincides with the Thomistic 

theory of the real distinction between at least the 

higher faculties of the soul the intellect and the will 

(62). But, beyond and apart from this, the solidity and 

reasonableness of the new scholastic psychology stand 

revealed in all the various departments of didactics 

and pedagogy ; for it offers an adequate explanation 

of quite a number of rules and maxims universally 

held by teachers and educators of experience. Here, 

then, again, the new scholasticism can rightly set up its 

principles in opposition to those of the Herbartian 

and positivist schools of pedagogy. An example 

or two will prove instructive. 

It is the province of didactics not merely to pre 

scribe the sciences and arts to be taught, and the 

order of teaching them, but also to lay down 

the right methods for teaching them the methods 

common to all and the methods peculiar to each.* 

Now those methods as a whole are an illuminating 

commentary on scholastic ideology. Why does the 

master proceed " from the concrete to the abstract " ? 

Why does he stimulate and sustain attention by 

employing " intuitive " methods ? Why does he 

freshen and enliven his teaching by descriptions, 

illustrations, examples, etc. if it be not because 

that great principle which governs our whole psychic 

life applies in a special manner to the earlier develop 

ments of our cognitive faculties : Nihil est in intellectu 

quod prius non fuerit in sensu (89) ? The abstractive 

1 Willmann has published a Didaktik (third edition, 2 vols., 1903), 

in keeping with scholastic principles, as well as numerous other writings 

on pedagogy. 

a We have touched on some of the questions of philosophical pedagogy 

in Section 21. There are several others, as, for example, that of the 

order in which the various branches of philosophy should be taught. 

248 MODERN .SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

process which engenders the universal concept and 

leads to the formulation of laws, must be constantly 

nourished by the products of perception and imagina 

tion, whatever be the subject-matter of our study. 

On the other hand, the master is not to spoon-feed 

his pupils with fully-cooked items of information, 

but rather to draw out and encourage the. exercise 

of those faculties by which the pupil, through his 

own personal effort, will acquire knowledge. The 

pupil must be net ire in assimilating knowledge : its 

communication must exert a formatire influence on 

his faculties. So the scholastic principle finds its 

application : " Quando igitur praeexistit aliquid in 

potentia o-ctiva completa, tune agens extrinsecum 

non agit nisi adjuvando agens intrinsecum, et mini- 

strando ei ea quibus possit in actum exire." 

Mere instruction is not an end in itself ; it should 

contribute to the formation of personality, and should 

therefore have its place assigned to it among the many 

factors of education proper. Those engaged in the 

education of youth are, well aware of the importance 

of an equal and well-balanced development of the 

merely sentient impulses and of the free, rational 

activities. The full exercise of physical vitality 

has its influence on the moral side of life ; judicious 

bodily exercise is an aid to mental activity ; the 

passions may be made the enemies or the allies of 

sound moral training. And why all this ? Because, 

as modern scholasticism teaches, there are not two 

beings in each of us, a body and a soul, but one 

substantially composite being ; while, on the other 

hand, rational volition, whether free or necessary, 

is intimately dependent on the organic appetites 

(137, 138). 

It has been said that education is simply the 

cultivation of good habits. Nothing truer, if we 

understand habit in the strict scholastic sense of 

1 St. Thomas, De Vertate, Q. XI., art. I, in corp. 

OTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL BRANCHES 249 

habitus or dispositio. Since the repetition of any 

act begets in the faculty a permanent disposition 

or facility to perform that act (85), the principal 

duty of the educator will be to guide and watch over 

the faculties of the pupil in the process of acquiring 

those good habits. And as the human soul is not 

a mere loose bundle of independent forces, since 

the harmony of the various mental activities demands 

a subordination of the faculties, psychology will 

place in the teacher s hands this important practical 

principle : that in the child or youth the ruling faculty 

must be the rational will. Mistress of itself and of 

all its energies, the soul ought to guide all these 

towards the proper end of all. The exercise of the 

will-faculty, as of any other faculty, demands effort ; 

and effort begets moral virtue : for the man of 

character is the man who can direct and control 

himself in conformity with the exigencies of his end 

or destiny, that is, of his perfection. 1 Thus man s 

moral destiny fixes the educational ideal. 

Finally, we may note that as the didactics and 

pedagogy which deal with the formation of the single, 

separate individual, derive their support from general 

psychology, so will they need to draw from other 

sciences when they regard the individual not as 

isolated, but in his actual social and historical setting. 

Here the sciences of education will have to address 

themselves to a group of phenomena concerning 

the growth and development of the energies of the 

whole vast, complex social organism. Just in this 

domain have didactics and pedagogy received a 

considerable impetus and extension in quite recent 

1 Besides intellect and will, many moderns recognise a third faculty, 

sentiment, which, they say, should receive special training. As schol 

astics consider sentiment, feeling, affection, emotion, etc., to belong 

mainly to the appetitive faculty [and in some degree to the cognitive], 

they do not admit this tripartite division into their didactics and 

pedagogy [though, of course, they fully appreciate and analyze the 

conscious states referred to]. 

1250 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

times. 1 Education is influenced by political forces, 

by the standard of domestic and social morality, 

by religion, by the various factors which history 

chronicles and criticizes. The character of the 

instruction given to youth will always depend on 

the prevailing conditions and conceptions of literature, 

science, and art. Educationalists may therefore 

expect to find valuable lights and helps from studying 

the history of civilizations. They will also be aided 

by ethical statistics, which point to the reciprocal 

influences of human liberty and of racial and criminal 

phenomena ; by " folk-psychology," with its findings 

on the formation of language, on religion, and on 

morals. 

153. The contact of general psychology with, 

philology, ethnology and history has <nven rise to 

o- ^.. ^ O 

a new group of psychological researches which 

Lazarus and Steindhal have called by the name of 

Volkerpsychologie, and which ha ye been more clearly 

mapped out and described by Wundt in his great 

work bearing that title/ This folk-psychology, or 

collective psychology as it might be called with greater 

accuracy and propriety, studies the psychological 

phenomena of the human crowd, of collective humanity 

as such, abstracting from all particular circumstances 

of time and space. Such, for instance, are the pheno 

mena of language, of public worship or religious rites 

and of public morals, to which Wundt has chiefly 

devoted his attention. There are many other 

analogous groups of phenomena : the psychological 

manifestations of grouping by families, by professions, 

by states ; of union on grounds of utility or pleasure ; 

of the mere human crowd as such : all these fall 

within the scope of the new science. 

1 See Willmann, op. cit., vol. I., p. 29, with its interesting introduction, 

pp. 1-98. The full title of the work is : " Didaktik als Bildungslehre 

nach ihren Beziehungen zur Socialforschung und zur Geschichte der 

Bildung." 

* Leipzig, 1900. 

OTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL BRANCHES 251 

This folk-psychology has a special bearing on 

sociology, which studies from a general standpoint 

the mutual dependence of all social phenomena on 

one another. The former science does not embrace 

all the psychic facts which might be assigned to 

sociological psychology. It leaves the latter science 

to investigate the influence of the social milieu on 

the mentality of a given individual, as also the 

influence a powerful personality might wield over 

a given social state. 1 These two latter questions 

belong at the same time to what has been called 

" individual psychology." About the idea that 

inspires this latter branch, and a few of its applications, 

a word may be said in conclusion. 

154. General psychology deals with the abstract 

type ; it studies man, not men. But individual 

differences are so many revelations of each distinct 

personality, so many factors of the individuation 

of one common specific nature (66). There are, 

first of all, characteristics peculiar to certain classes 

of men. Accurate observation discovers the influences 

of such factors as age ; and notably the science of 

child-psychology (pedologie) itself still in its infancy 

traces the development of child-life in the greatest 

diversity of surroundings : among civilized and 

uncivilized peoples, in normal and in abnormal 

circumstances. Other explorers are accumulating 

the first materials ever collected in view of a sex- 

psychology ; others again are studying the innumer 

able modifications and disturbances wrought by 

disease and illness on ordinary psychic phenomena ; 

while investigators in the domain of criminal anthro 

pology are busy comparing the moral type of man 

with the criminal. 

Further still, by analyzing the data of philology, 

1 See some observations by Pfcre De Munnynck, in the Mouvement 

sociologique, published by the " Societe beige de sociologie," 1901, 

pp. 157 and foil. 

252 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

ethnography and history, we might build up an 

ethnical psychology, a psychology of each of the 

different nations or races of people. And finally, 

individual biography may be developed in certain 

cases into a psychology of such types or exceptions 

as Julius Caesar or Napoleon ; a psychology which 

will analyze those infinitely small perceptions of 

which Leibnitz speaks, and which stamp on each 

conscious being the indelible seal of individuality. 1 

155. Whatever be the future achievements of 

folk-psychology and individual-psychology, the new 

scholasticism would seem a priori to possess certain 

fundamental doctrine s capable of shedding not a 

little light on these obscure places. Its theories 

on the origin of language and on the moral aspirations 

of man, explain at least as clearly as evolutionism 

the phenomena of language and religion. The 

scholastic ideology offers a satisfactory explanation 

of the genesis of conscious states in the child; the 

mutual dependence of psychical and physiological 

functions in a being composed of matter and spirit and 

endowed with substantial unity, will explain the 

various phenomena of sexual psychology, the strange 

facts brought to light by pathological psychology, 

and so on. 

SECTION 33. ETHICS AND NATURAL RIGHT. 

156. The century just elapsed has witnessed the 

rise of the most widely divergent systems of moral 

philosophy. Utilitarian ethics are the offspring of 

the materialism and positivism which would identify 

happiness either with an exclusively egoistic well- 

being whose factors may be weighed and measured 

1 Under the title of comparative psychology or animal psychology 

\ve may group all investigations into the similarity and dissimilarity 

of men and animals in regard to their respective states of consciousness. 

ETHICS AND NATURAL RIGHT 253 

by a sort of " moral arithmetic," or else with the 

altruistic well-being of humanity in the lump. 

Spencer has attempted the reconciliation of egoism 

and altruism in his imposing synthesis of the evolu 

tionist philosophy : moral conduct has had its first 

faint, far-away beginnings in the pleasure attending 

the most elementary processes of conscious life : 

its evolution runs in a groove parallel to organic 

evolution : it will finally usher in a social state in 

which a perfect harmony will be realized between 

altruistic feelings and egoistic or individual well- 

being. The evolution-craze is accountable for some 

sufficiently wild and fantastic speculations in the 

domain of ethics as elsewhere. Most evolutionists, 

however, have (with Leslie Stephen) abandoned the 

Spencerian idea of an ultimate state of moral equili 

brium, and rather seek the morality of human 

conduct in its continuous adaptation to the actual 

exigencies of a social state that is subject to perpetual 

evolution. If this be so, there is manifestly no 

intrinsic difference between good and evil ; ( and the 

evidences of history, anthropology and ethnography 

are pointed to as showing that the test of morality 

has ever and always varied with the time and circum 

stances In other directions the rigid 

stoicism of Kantian ethics would have us act inde 

pendently of all self-interest, of all motives extrinsic 

to duty, and obey the law for its own sake (the 

categorical imperative). Schopenhauer s pessimistic 

ethics, originating in the Kantian concept of the 

noumenon, regards all nature, man included, as a 

series of objectivations of will, appearing only for 

the endurance of struggle and misery. Pessimism 

has more recently rid itself of its Kantian associations, 

and still survives, though more as an attitude of 

feeling or sentiment than as a philosophical system. 

These are but a few out of many modern ethical 

systems, all so utterly defective and unsatisfactory 

254 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

that well-known moralists like Sidgwick have passed 

through all of them and found rest in none. 1 

Nor has any single theory of scholastic ethics 

found a place in this chaos of modern systems. 

Can the time-honoured teachings of scholastics on 

the last end of man, his freedom and responsibility, 

on good and evil, law and duty, reward and punish 

ment be still maintained in the twentieth century ? 

If they can, it will be by bearing the brunt of modern 

controversy and ( merging successfully from the tests 

lo which positivism and evolutionism will subject 

t hem. ( )ur ethical teaching must be submitted to such 

tests. Instead of starting from stereotyped, tra 

ditional principles, which assume precisely what our 

present-day adversaries call into question, we must 

carry our analysis some steps farther back ; we must 

check and supplement the data of consciousness by 

sociological and ethnographical observations ; take 

account of the variations and weaknesses and failures 

of the moral sense or conscience in undeveloped or 

decadent societies ; and carefully discriminate 

between the changeable and the unchangeable. The 

necessity of employing such methods of observation 

is still more manifest when we pass from the general 

principles of morals to their applications in the 

sphere of natural right. 

157. And in the first place we must have a proper 

understanding of the connection between natural 

or social right and the principles of general ethics. 

If, with Kant, we are to regard these two departments 

as entirely separate, the former dealing with man s 

interior, autonomous activity, and the latter with his 

external actions, including the conditions which 

safeguard the exercise of human liberty then, 

obviously, natural right has no connection whatever 

1 Sec sonic interesting pages from Sidg\vick, published in Mind 

(April, 1901, p. 287), tinder the title : " Professor Sidgwick s Ethical 

View. An auto-historical fragment." 

ETHICS AND NATURAL RIGHT 255 

with man s last end, nor does it impose any moral 

obligation upon him ; its prescriptions in no way 

surpass the regulations of an ordinary police code. 

Against such a weakly and demoralizing doctrine 

the foundations of our social rights and duties must 

be clearly shown to consist in the agreement of the 

known phenomena of social life and intercourse with 

the supreme and ultimate end of the individual man. 

It may be said with truth that there is a complete 

and absolute change from the traditional method of 

dealing with the great leading problems of social 

ethics : freedom of contract, organization of labour, 

property rights, education, the family, the origin, 

forms and limits of State authority, the relations of 

Church and State, international law, and the rights 

of war and peace. Not that these questions were 

unknown in the Middle Ages ; but they were dealt 

with in a rather academic fashion, and solved on 

almost exclusively deductive lines, with only very 

rare attempts at applying the solutions to actual 

social conditions. Deduction can, of course, establish 

certain very general precepts of natural right (the 

prohibition of homicide, for example) ; but by itself 

it is helpless in presence of the highly complex 

and special ramifications of rights and duties in the 

various departments of modern life and intercourse. 

The historical and sociological sciences, so carefully 

cultivated in modern times, have proved to evidence 

that social conditions vary with the epoch and the 

country, that they are the resultant of quite a number 

of fluctuating influences, and that accordingly the 

science of natural right should not merely establish 

immutable principles bearing on the moral end of 

man but should likewise deal with the contingent 

circumstances accompanying the application of those 

principles. Our titles to private property and our 

methods of production have changed considerably 

since the thirteenth century ; St. Thomas arguments 

256 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

in justification of the former have not the same 

convincing force now as they had then. The 

investment of capital at interest, such a fertile source 

of production in modern conditions, is something 

very different from the usury that formed the object 

of long and bitter controversies in the Middle Ages. 

Then, also, ethnographical researches have brought 

to light many elementary forms of family life and 

domestic relations, differing widely from the type 

familiar to the .Middle Ages. In a word, sociology 

understood in the wider and larger sense is trans 

forming the methods of the science, of natural right. 

From all this the new scholasticism stands to gain, 

if it only avoids preconceived ideas, accepts all facts 

as they are brought to light, studies each ({Kextion 

on its merits in the light of these facts, and not 

merely in its present setting but as presented in the 

pages of history. Boasting of this experimental 

method, systems like that of historical materialism 

have made pretence of revolutionizing natural right : 

and these must be fought with their own weapons. 1 

SECTION 34. LOGIC. 

158. Of all portions of ancient philosophy, the 

logic of Aristotle and the scholastics has best stood 

the shock of centuries. The end of the reign of 

Aristotle is not yet ; men of the mental calibre of 

Kant have bowed in homage before him. 

1 Writing of the social ethics of scholasticism, M. Charles Gide says : 

The renaissance of the Catholic teaching, even in its Thomistic form, 

renders imperative at the piesent day a clo.se study of those so-called fossil 

doctrines ; and when they are brought to light one is astonished at their 

healthy and promising vitality, at their striking resemblance to man} of our 

modern theories and at the insignificance of our attempts to improve on 

them." In the Revue d economic politiqne, 1896, pp. 514-515 (a propos 

of a work of M. Brants, Les theories economiques an XI lie et au XI Ve 

siecle ). 

LOGIC 257 

The new scholasticism will take up and transmit 

the best thought of the thirteenth century. But 

there is such a close connection between ideology 

and logic that the solutions offered in the former 

branch will necessarily influence those of the latter. 

The theory of abstraction underlies the scientific 

explanation of the mental act of judgment, for it is 

on abstraction that every intellectual act is based : 

without presupposing abstraction there can be no 

proper understanding of the categories and predic- 

ables, of the general mechanism of judgment, of 

the laws of syllogism and induction, of the nature 

of definition, division and demonstration, nor even 

of the bare notion of science. 

But then, is there nothing new in the new scho 

lastic logic ? On the contrary. Since John Stuart 

Mill erected his logical system on the basis of a 

positivist ideology, all the laws of thought have been 

subjected to a searching analysis. The positivist 

resolves judgment into an association of sensations ; 

the syllogism is either declared worthless (143) or 

reduced to induction ; and the latter is a mere 

passage of thought from the particular to the parti 

cular. Definition, moreover, so far from forming 

the groundwork of the sciences, becomes a mere 

description of facts, and science itself is only a 

catalogue of stable associations between experienced 

sensations. 

By the very fact of its close contact with positivism 

the new scholastic philosophy must of necessity 

emphasize and strengthen its vital theories. Thus 

it is that scientific induction, almost entirely neglected 

in medieval logic, has been established on a sound 

basis in order to secure it against the attacks that 

were being made upon it ; and the inductive methods, 

so ably outlined by John Stuart Mill, are now com 

monly adopted by scholastics. Credit is likewise 

due to him for a new classification of the fallacies. 

258 MODERN SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES 

These are but a few of the points in which the new 

scholasticism has largely profited by contact with 

its adversaries. 

Nowadays, more than ever, logic is proclaimed 

to be an instrument of knowledge. Scholastics and 

positivists are at one in thinking that dialectic is 

not an end in itself. As one of the ancients 

humorously remarks : " those who stop in logic are 

like eaters of crayfish, who lor sake <>t a morsel lose 

all their time over a pile of scales." 

159. For some years past scientific method has 

been the object of such careful and exhaustive study 

that it bids fair to be no longer a mere chapter in 

logic but an independent whole. \Ve refer to the 

constructive or inventive methods (1!>), not to the 

methods of teaching : these latter belong nowadays 

to didactics (15-2). Under the title of methodology, 

or of a/i/tl-h d I<HJ<C, scholars are investigating the 

constitutive method of each particular science : 

arithmetic, geometry, the calculus, etc., to mention 

a few deductive or rational sciences ; physics, 

chemistry, biology, political economy, history, etc., 

to instance the inductive sciences of observation 

and experiment. 

As for the method of philosophy itself, the com 

bination of analysis and synthesis must ever remain 

a fortiori the soul of all philosophical effort, since 

this must ever aim at embracing in one comprehensive 

view (synthesis) the manifold departments (analysis) 

on the universal order (4, 48, 120). 

CHAPTER III. 

THE FUTURE OF THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM. 

SECTION 35. CONCLUSION. 

160. Were we to pursue the parallel established 

in the present volume between medieval and modern 

scholasticism, we should conclude by comparing the 

decadence of the former with the future of the latter. 

(Section 19). It is not, however, the object of the 

present section to indulge in prophecy, but rather 

to point to certain general conclusions which emerge 

from our investigations, and which, so far as we can 

judge to-day, are destined to influence the philosophy 

of to-morrow. 

To take up the old scholasticism in globo, without 

changing anything, or adding anything, is simply 

out of the question. It is only the things of to-day 

that have an interest for the people of to-day : they 

will give their consideration only to what is modern. 

Hence, the " scholastic " thought -system must become 

" neo-scholastic " if it is to have life and influence 

in the modern world. That is to say, it must undergo 

a process of overhauling and resetting which will 

remove its medieval appearance and make it an 

attractive modern article. 

But surely the modern spirit will kill the old philo 

sophy instead of breathing a new life into it ? Can 

we put new wine into old bottles ? Will they not 

burst in the experiment ? Well, we can test the 

tenacity of the old scholastic doctrines by carefully 

260 THE FUTURE OF THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM 

comparing them with their rivals of the present day. 

And the impartial testimony of enlightened and 

candid opponents will add some precious information 

to the results of such a comparison. 

Besides the new scholasticism, two other great cur 

rents share between them all the philosophical systems 

of the opening century : Neo-Kantism and positivism. 

In these two latter currents it is easy to detect the 

influence of prolonged doubt about the existence of 

an absolute or noumenal realitv. Neo-Kantism 

especially has exerted quite an extraordinary influence, 

both in Europe and in America, on the convictions 

of contemporary thinkers. They are all subjectivists 

of some shade or other : phenomenism has become 

a sort of atmosphere breathed by all modern thought. 

Neo-Kantism and positivism are both alike met. 

by the rational dogmatism of the new scholastic 

philosophy the only one that merits serious attention 

among contemporary dogmatic systems. Inheriting 

as it does the traditional spiritualism of a Plato, an 

Aristotle, a St. Augustine and a St. Thomas, it bases 

its claims neither on the tradition which it perpetuates 

nor on arguments from authority which can be 

twisted in opposite directions like the nose of a 

waxen image, to which it is quaintly compared by 

a thirteenth century scholastic, Alanus of Lille : 

auctoritas cereum luibct nasum, id est, in diver sum 

potest flecti sensum. On the contrary , it is after an 

examination of the facts that are engaging the 

attention of our contemporaries, after interpreting 

the results achieved by the sciences, and after testing 

critically its own principles, that the new scholasticism 

lays down its conclusions, and invites philosophers 

of the twentieth century to recognise them and deal 

with them on precisely the same titles as they deal 

with those of Neo-Kantism and positivism. 

161. That it can rightfully claim to have such 

consideration accorded to it, its adversaries themselves 

CONCLUSION 261 

admit. Men like Boutroux acknowledge that the 

system of Aristotle can compare advantageously 

to-day with Kantism and with evolutionism. 1 

Paulsen and Eucken regard the new scholasticism 

as the rival of Kantism, and describe the opposition 

of the rival systems as a war between two worlds 

(der Kampf zweier Welten). a " In the presence of 

such a striking and confident (siegesgewiss) forward 

march of medieval ideas, writes Mr. Doering, it will 

no longer suffice merely to ignore them, or to decline 

or stop short of questions of principles. The time 

has come for each to deliberately choose his attitude 

in regard to those principles and to raise aloft his 

banner." 3 Many, indeed, are the tributes paid by 

various other adversaries to the new scholasticism, 

but it would be both superfluous and needless to 

reproduce all of them here. 4 

162. If we record such testimonies here at all it 

is firstly in order to show how absurd is the attitude 

of those numerous sceptics who condemn without 

hearing and mock at what they do not understand. 

And it is secondly in order to persuade those of our 

friends who are impatient for the rapid and sweeping 

triumph of our philosophy, that success must not 

be expected from extrinsic factors only, but must 

always be the crown and the result of real doctrinal 

superiority. Leo XIII. did not create the merit 

of the new scholasticism by virtue of a decree, but 

he understood its merit and saw his opportunity. 

1 Aristote, Etudes d histoire de philosophic (Paris, 1901), p. 202. 

* Eucken, Thomas von Aquino und Kant. Ein Kampf zweiev Weltcn 

(Kantstudien. 1901, Bd. VI, h. i). Paulsen, Kant, der Philosoph des 

Protestantismus (ib. 1899). The latter study, being conceived from the 

religious point of view, is of less importance from the point of view of the 

present work. 

3 Doering. in the Zeitschr. f. Psychol. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane, 1899, 

pp. 222-224, i fl a review of Mercier s Origines de La Psychologie 

contemporaine. 

4 See, for example, Mercier s Origines, etc., ch. viii : " Le neo-Thomisme " ; 

and the Revue N eo-Scolastique, 1894, pp. 5 and foil., and under the heading : 

Le mouvement neo-thomiste. 

262 THE FUTURE OF THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM^^ 

His energetic words may have hastened the^dawn 

and added to the renown of the new scholastic 

philosophy ; but they could never have given its 

doctrines an abiding and recognised authority did 

not these doctrines themselves give evidence and 

promise of a deep and vigorous vitality. 

They will prevail, as the truth prevails ; but their 

growth will be progressive, and always conditioned 

by the general level of man s intellectual acquire 

ments. In this respect the new scholasticism is 

self-moving like every living thing ; a stop in its 

evolution would be the symptom of another decay. 

APPENDIX. 

PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENCES AT 

LOUVAIN. 1 

THE rise and progress of the new Scholastic Philosophy 

at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium, 

during the past twenty years, has attracted the 

attention of philosophers of every school and every 

shade of opinion. 2 It marks an epoch in the history 

of Modern Philosophy, and it contains many important 

lessons for all who take an interest in the progress 

of thought, especially among Catholics. In the 

following pages we shall aim at giving a very brief 

sketch of the spirit that animates the work that is 

being done at Louvain in the department of Philo 

sophy, and at conveying some idea of the significance 

and influence of the new movement. We have been 

already endeavouring to show how Scholastic Philo 

sophy, subsequent to the rise of Cartesianism, became 

divorced from the Natural Sciences, to the great 

detriment of both, and of the Catholic religion as well, 3 

and how Leo XIII sought, with all the power of 

a great mind, to repair the damage done, or at least 

1 Reprinted, with some minor alterations and omissions, from the IRISH 

ECCLESIASTICAL RKCORU. May and June. 1905. 

a Cf. L Institut Supcrieur de Philosophie d L Universite Catholique de 

Louvain (1890-1904), by Rev. A. Pelzer, D.Ph. (30 pp. ; Imprimerie 

Folleunis et Ceuterick, 32, rue des Orphelins). Le Mouvement Neo- 

Thomiste (16 pp.), extrait de la Revue N eo-Scolastique, publi^e par la 

Societe Philosophique de Louvain. Directeur : D. Mercier. Secretaire 

de Redaction : M. De Wulf. (Institut Superieur de Philosophie, I, rue des 

Flamands, 1901 ). Deux Centres du Mouvement Thomiste f Rome et Louvain, 

par C. Besse. (63 pp. ; , Paris, Letouzey et Ane, 17, rue du Vieux-Colombier, 

1902). Rapport sur les Etudes Superieures de Philosophie, presente par 

Monseigneur D. Mercier au Congres de Malines, 1891. (Louvain, Librairie 

de 1 Inslitut de Philosophie, Louvain, 1891, 32 pp.) 

: I. E. RECORD, January, 1906. 

APPENDIX 

to prevent a continuance of it, by renewing once 

more the long shattered alliance. 1 

I. THE PROJECT OF A PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTE AT 

LOUVAIN. 

It was Leo X11I himself who conceived the project 

of founding a special Institute for the study of 

Scholastic Philosophy in close connection with the 

sciences in the Catholic University of Louvain. 

During the time he hud been Papal Nuncio in Belgium 

he had learned to esteem and admire the splendid 

work done in every department of education by the 

Louvain professors, lav and clerical alike/ He 

felt that a centre of such scientific renown, such 

intellectual activity, and such frank and fearless 

Catholicity, would be just the fittest place in the 

whole Catholic world to wed once more the old 

Scholastic Philosophy with the progressive Modern 

Sciences. The idea of the possibility of such a 

union gave a severe shock, no doubt, both to timid 

Catholics on the one hand, and to aggressive infidels 

on the other. But Leo XIII knew Scholastic 

Philosophy, and knowing it he had confidence in 

its harmony with scientific truth. Fortunately, too, 

he found men in Belgium ready to share that con 

fidence in the fullest, to take up his project with 

ardour, and to carry it through many difficulties 

and much opposition to the well deserved success 

which it enjoys to-day. AVe allude especially to 

the illustrious Cardinal Archbishop of Mechlin, 

Cardinal Mercier, founder of the Louvain Philo 

sophical Institute. He was Professor of Philosophy 

1 Ibid., February, 1906. 

2 The professors are. of course, all Catholics. They number over one 

hundred. About two-thirds are laymen. Some priests are to be found 

in all the faculties. In the appointments whether of clerics or laics - 

merit alone is looked to. Over 2.000 students all Catholics frequent 

the University. 

PROJECT OF LOU VAIN INSTITUTE 265 

in the Petit Seminaire of Mechlin, when, in 1880, 

he was called to Louvain to fill the new chair of 

Thomistic Philosophy established at the University 

in obedience to the wishes of Leo XIII. 1 The 

establishment of this chair only prepared the way 

for a larger scheme. Eight years afterwards, in 

July, 1888, the Pope evidently considered that the 

time was ripe for founding a special Institute. In a 

Brief to Cardinal Goosens, Archbishop of Mechlin, 

he unfolded his plans. " It seems to Us useful and 

supremely advantageous," he wrote, " to establish 

a certain number of new chairs so that from these 

different departments of teaching, wisely and har 

moniously bound together, there may result an 

Institute of Thomistic Philosophy, endowed with a 

distinct existence." More than a year afterwards, 

when some attempt had been made to carry out 

the Pope s wishes, and want of funds proved the 

greatest obstacle, Leo XIII came to the rescue with 

a gift of 6,400 (150,000 francs), exhorting those 

engaged in the work to use their best efforts to collect 

the necessary balance from all friends of education 

in Belgium. That he was determined to have the 

good project carried out is evident from these 

further words of his in a Brief of November, 1889 : 

" We consider it not only opportune but necessary 

to give philosophical studies a direction towards 

nature so that students may be able to find in them, 

side by side with the lessons of ancient wisdom, the 

discoveries we owe to the able investigations of our 

contemporaries, and may draw therefrom treasures 

equally profitable to religion and to society." 

It is easy to recognise in those words the pre 

dominant idea that runs through the whole Encyclical 

Mterni Patris : that Scholastic Philosophy must be 

taught in close conjunction with all the neighbouring 

1 Brief of December 25th, 1880, to Cardinal Dechamps, Archbishop of 

Malines. 

266 APPENDIX 

natural and social sciences if it is to come out into 

the open and vindicate for itself as it ought an 

honourable place amongst the thought-systems that 

agitate the scientific, social and religious worlds in 

the twentieth century. That idea was taken up 

and developed by Merrier and his friends at Louvain, 

with a largeness and liberality of view and with an 

amount of zeal and devotedness which we look for 

in vain even in Rome itself. Speaking of the Institute 

in those days of its infancv, the Abb- Besse writes : 

" A new force born of the soil, so to speak, gave it- 

life. To its director is due the credit of having 

first maintained, then emphasized, enlarged and 

developed the programme and project of the Pope : 

and, finally, of having created a Thomism which, 

while devoid of all Roman initiative and imitation, 

has nevertheless given to the Pope s ideal a more 

decided realization than it ever achieved in Rome. " 

The appeal for funds to go on with the work met 

with a response which, if slow at first, was on the 

whole generous. The Belgian Catholics have to- 

bear a heavy financial burden for the annual upkeep 

of such a vast university as Louvain. But as they 

are fully alive to the importance of education, large 

gifts, often anonymous, unexpected, providential, 

are usually forthcoming to tide any worthy 

educational enterprise over its financial difficulties. 

The foundation and equipment of the Philosophical 

Institute was not unduly delayed for want of funds. 

But there were other difficulties and disappoint 

ments, enmities and oppositions, such as are incident 

to the undertaking of any great and difficult work. 

To these we shall return later on. They persisted 

long enough to break the spirit of anyone less hopeful 

and persevering than Mercier. However, they 

gradually diminished with time, and the Institute 

began to show signs of a vigorous and nourishing 

1 Deux Centre?, etc., p. 38. 

PROJECT OF LOUVAIN INSTITUTE 267 

life. God s blessing was with the good work. 

Mercier s manifest sincerity, his zeal in the cause 

of truth, his many admirable qualities of head and 

heart enabled him to overcome all opposition and 

win the respect of all. He enjoyed the fullest 

confidence of Leo XIII, 1 and had the pleasure of hear 

ing the holy Pontiff publicly praise and recommend 

the work of his (Leo s) Institute the Pope might 

have said their Institute as lately as the year 1900. * 

To-day the Louvain Philosophical Institute wins 

the respect and esteem of every impartial visitor. 

Not indeed that it is yet quite fully equipped and 

organized, or perfect in every detail, but that it is 

so far a decided success, an institution that is doing 

a vast amount of solid, substantial work of a very 

superior and highly creditable sort. It is training 

professors of Philosophy not only for Belgium, but 

for many seminaries, colleges and universities all 

over Europe and the English-speaking world ; and 

it is giving them a training which, it is our honest 

belief, cannot be equalled elsewhere. It is only the 

bare truth to say that " if we find engineers who 

would wish to have studied at Zurich, doctors who 

would wish to have been through the Pasteur Insti 

tute, theologians who matriculate in the University 

of Tubingen, it seems that it is towards the Institute 

of Louvain that our young philosophers ought in 

future to direct their steps." 3 

1 We are glad to be able to state that the present supreme Pontiff, Pius X r 

is altogether of the same mind towards the Neo-Scholastic Philosophy 

and the Louvain School. In a Brief to Mgr. Mercier and the masters and 

students of the Seminaire Leon XIII , dated June 2Oth, 1904, and published 

in the August number of the Revue Neo-Scolastique, the Holy Father 

speaks in the highest terms of the Institute and its work. He thanks God 

for blessing the project of his predecessor in founding the Institute, and 

exhorts teachers and students alike to continue their noble work : " Minime 

dubitantes quin in Nobis, apud quos benemeritum Institutum vestrum 

plurimum valet, et singularis gratiae et benignae voluntatis ii nunquam 

desiderentur sensus, quibus ipse Decessor Noster vos enixe est prosecutus." 

- Discourse of Leo XIII to the Belgian Pilgrims, December 3Oth, 1900, 

Revue Neo-Scolastique, February, 1901, pp. 84-85. 

:! Deux Centres, etc., p. 38. 

268 APPENDIX 

With such a general knowledge of the Institute, 

derived as it were from without, we are now in a 

position to examine more closely the spirit which, 

from the outset, animated its inner life and working. 

What is really most accountable for the remarkable 

success of the Institute is 

II. THE SPIKIT THAT ANIMATES PHILOSOPHICAL 

STUDIES AT LOU VAIN. 

We can lind no more authentic exponent of that 

spirit than .Meivier himself. He was invited by the 

Cardinal-Archbishop of Mechlin, Cardinal Goosens, 

to give an exposition of the leading ideas of the 

projected .Papal scheme, before the * Higher 

Education Section " of the Congress held in that 

city in 1X91. He did so in a very remarkable 

Rapport xur A x Etude* superieures de Philosophic. 

Commencing with the observation that " Catholics 

live in a state of isolation in the scientific world," 

he went on to seek the causes of that isolation, fatal 

alike to science and to religion. Apart from the 

systematic opposition of some scientists to every 

thing Christian, he set down as a leading cause of 

the phenomenon the widespread prevalence amongst 

non-Catholics of a preconceived idea that we Catholics 

are always engaged in preoccupations subservient 

to the defence of our faith : 

;t Yes [he continues] the idea is widely entertained 

that the Catholic savant is a soldier in the service 

of his faith, and that, in his hands, science can be 

nothing but a weapon for the defence of his credo. 

In the eyes of many he would seem to be always 

under the bolt of a threatened excommunication, 

or shackled by troublesome dogmas ; and to remain 

faithful to his religion he must apparently renounce 

all disinterested attachment to the sciences and all 

SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 269 

free cultivation of them. Hence the distrust which 

he encounters. A publication coming from a 

Catholic institution Protestant institutions are 

judged more favourably, no doubt because they have 

given proofs of their independence by their revolt 

from authority is treated as a plea pro domo, as an 

apologetic which can have no right or title to an 

impartial and objective examination." 

Such is the great current misconception of the 

Catholic attitude towards science in the minds of 

non-Catholics. To remove this misconception must 

be our first aim in the future scientific and philosophic 

education of our Catholic youth. Then, side by 

side with this misconception, and perhaps to some 

extent the cause of it and of the consequent ostracism 

of Catholics from the world of science, there is another 

misconception in the minds of Catholics themselves 

the mistaken view which a large number of Catholics 

have about science. 

" For them science consists in learning and collect 

ing results already achieved, in order to synthesize 

them under the conceptions of religious faith or of 

some spiritualist metaphysic. Contemporary science 

has no longer such comprehensive aims or synthetic 

tendencies ; it is, before all, a science of partial, 

minute observations, a science of analysis. 

" From that diversity of point of view in the way 

of looking at science results this consequence : that 

Catholics resign themselves too easily to the secondary 

role of mere retailers of science ; too few of them 

have any ambition to work at what may be called 

science in the making ; too few aim at gathering and 

moulding the materials which must serve in the 

future to form the new synthesis of science and 

Christian philosophy. Undoubtedly this final syn 

thesis will harmonize with the dogmas of our Credo, 

and with the fundamental principles of Christian 

wisdom ; but while waiting till that harmony shines 

270 APPENDIX 

forth in its full light, the objections raised by unbelief 

conceal it from the eyes of many, and because our 

champions are not always there to give back with 

recognised competence and authority the direct and 

immediate answers which these objections call for, 

doubts arise and convictions are shaken ; the 

materials are grouped, arranged, and classified without 

us, and too often against us, and infidelity monopolizes 

for its own profit the scientific prestige which should 

be made to serve only the propagation of truth." 

"We would fain believe, that the above picture is 

somewhat overdrawn, but \ve fear it fairly represents 

what was the real state of affairs when Mercier 

proposed the remedy which he has been ever since 

ca irving out with such gratifying results. That 

remedy he outlined in these very explicit terms : 

" To form, in greater numbers, men who will 

devote themselves to science /or vV.s-r//, without any 

aim that is professional or directly apologetic, men 

who will work (if firxt hand in fashioning the materials 

of the edifice of science, and who will thus contribute 

to its gradual construction ; and to create the resources 

which this work demands : such at the present day 

ought to be the two-fold aim of the efforts of all 

who are solicitous for the prestige of the Church in 

the world and for the efficacy of its action on the 

souls of men." 

So far this one idea stands out prominently : that 

if the Catholic is to be heard and respected in the 

world of modern science and modern philosophy he 

must be taught to cultivate those studies for their own 

sake, and not with any conscious, intended dependence 

on dogma, nor with any direct subservience to 

apologetical ends. 

But to find the resources for forming Catholic 

youth on those lines in the sciences is no easy matter. 

And to give them such a formation in philosophy 

seems more difficult still ; for the latter presupposes 

SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 271 

the former discipline : nemo metapliysicus qui non 

prius physicus. Mercier in nowise minimises these 

difficulties : he gives quite a luminous view of all that 

such a programme would include : 

" There is question of giving to the Church 

workers who will break the soil of science as of old 

the monks of the West broke the virgin soil of Christian 

Europe and laid the foundations of the material 

civilization it enjoys to-day ; of showing the respect 

of the Church for human reason, and the fruit she 

expects from its work for the glory of Him who has 

proclaimed Himself Master of the Sciences. . . . 

" An immense field is open to scientific investi 

gation. The boundaries of the old philosophy have 

become too narrow : they must be extended. Man 

has multiplied his power of vision ; he enters the 

world of the infinitely small and fixes his scrutinizing 

gaze upon regions where our most powerful telescopes 

discern no limits. Physics and Chemistry progress 

with giant strides in the study of the properties of 

matter and of the combination of its elements. 

Geology and Cosmogony reconstruct the history of 

the formation and origins of our planet. Biology 

and the natural sciences study the minute structure 

of living organisms, their distribution in space and 

succession in time ; and embryogeny explores their 

origin. The archaeological, philological, and social 

sciences remount the past ages of our history and 

civilizations. What an inexhaustible mine is here 

to exploit, what regions to explore and materials 

to analyze and interpret ; finally, what pioneers 

we must engage in the work if we are to gain a share 

in all those treasures ! . 

" It is imperative, therefore, that in those different 

domains we should have explorers and masters who, 

by their own activity, by their own achievements, 

may vindicate for themselves the right to speak to 

the scientific world and to be heard by it ; then we 

272 APPENDIX 

can answer the eternal objection that faith blinds us, 

that faith and reason are incompatible, better far 

than by abstract principles, better far than by an 

appeal to the past : we can answer it by the stubborn 

evidence of actual and living facts." 

But if it is important for the Church to have 

Catholics as scientists, it is far more important for 

her to have Catholic scientists who will be also 

philosophers : 

If we must devote ourselves to works of analysis 

we must remember experience has only too clearly 

shown that analysis left to itself easily gives rise to 

narrowness of mind, to a sort of instinctive antipathy 

to all that is beyond observed fact, to positivist 

tendencies, if not to positivist convictions. 

" .But science is not an accumulation of facts, it is a 

system embracing facts and their mutual relations. 

" The particular sciences do not give us a complete 

representation of reality. They abstract : but the 

relations which they isolate in thought lie together 

in reality, and are interwoven with one another ; 

and that is why the special sciences demand and give 

rise to a science of sciences, to a general synthesis, 

in a w r ord, to Philosophy. . . . 

" Sound philosophy sets out from analysis and 

terminates in synthesis as its natural complement. 

. . . Philosophy is by definition a knowledge of the 

totality of things through their highest causes. But is 

it not evident that before arriving at the highest causes 

we must pass through those lower ones with which the 

particular sciences occupy themselves ? . . . 

" At the present day, when the sciences have 

become so vast and numerous, how are \ve to achieve 

the double task of keeping au courant with them all, 

and of synthesizing their results ? That difficulty 

is a grave and delicate one. 

" Since individual courage feels itself powerless in 

presence of the field of observation which goes on 

SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 273 

widening day by day, association must make up 

for the insufficiency of the isolated worker ; men of 

analysis and men of synthesis must come together, 

and form, by their daily intercourse and united 

action, an atmosphere suited to the harmonious 

development of science and philosophy alike. Such 

is the object of the special School of Philosophy 

which Leo XIII, the illustrious restorer of higher 

studies, has wished to found in our country and to 

place under the patronage of St. Thomas of Aquin 

that striking incarnation of the spirit of observation 

united with the spirit of synthesis, that worker of 

genius who ever deemed it a duty to fertilize Philo 

sophy by Science and to elevate Science simul 

taneously to the heights of Philosophy." l 

We find condensed in the above passages glowing 

as they are with the eloquence of one inspired with 

a noble zeal in the cause of truth an exalted and 

true conception of the scope and mission of philo 

sophical training ; a faithful and enthusiastic reitera 

tion of Leo the Thirteenth s bold and outspoken 

ideas on the close and intimate relations that ought 

to exist between Science and Philosophy* ; a clear 

understanding of the need to bring together those 

various studies into one and the same educational 

centre ; an implicit confidence that true Science and 

true Philosophy would and should harmonize with 

each other and both alike with the Catholic Faith ; 

and a frank and open assertion, based upon that 

very confidence, that in Schools of Science and of 

Philosophy those subjects should be taught to our 

Catholic youth without any view to apologetics, but 

simply and solely for their own sakes that the 

teaching and learning of those branches, to be 

successful, must be disinterested. 

1 The above passages from Mercier s Rapport are all translated from the 

various pamphlets enumerated at the head of this Appendix. 

2 Vide I. E. RECORD, February, 1906. 

T 

274 APPENDIX 

In order to re-establish more effectually the long 

superseded alliance between Scholastic Philosophy 

and the Sciences, Mercier found it necessary to 

insist most emphatically that this Philosophy was far 

more than what many Catholics had come to con 

sider it a mere intellectual discipline subsidiary to 

Supernatural Theology that in the presence of that 

Theology, from which it received such illumination, 

and to which it could never run counter, it was 

itself an independent and autonomous science, based 

upon all the natural sciences of observation and 

experiment. 

" No one [writes the Abbe IVsse] could mark oil 

more clearly the respect we owe to theology, from 

the liberty we retain in science. .Mercier here 

admirably lays down the <t priori rights of nature 

and of grace. It is just because he is quite certain 

that grace never will be wanting to the sincere 

scientist that he is himself a sincere and disinterested 

scientist abstracting from grace. 1 

But how were all these views and projects of 

Mercier received when they were tirst put forth by 

him ? Like everything that sounds novel not 

without suspicion. "Was Philosophy, then, really 

based on the sciences, and were Catholic philosophers 

to be obliged to take account of what was going on 

in the scientific world ? Was not Catholic Philo 

sophy something far above such commerce with the 

" things of earth " ? Was it not a pure intellectual 

system subservient only to the noble Queen of 

Sciences ; Philosophia ancilla Theologies ? What 

could it have to do with laboratories and dissecting- 

rooms ? So argued the Catholic advocates of the 

status quo philosophers and the scientists alike. There 

had been already a struggle in Home between the 

old ideas and the new before the latter got a locus 

1 Deux Centres, etc., p. 41. 

SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 275 

standi in the schools. At Louvain the same struggle 

was fought over again, only with greater success in 

the issue. The scientists were at first inclined to 

look askance at what they considered an unwarrant 

able sort of dilettante dabbling in laboratories on 

the part of those young philosophers ; and to hold 

aloof rather than co-operate. Those of the philo 

sophers who were not radically opposed to the new 

departure expressed their fears that the neo-Thomists 

were going far beyond the Papal wishes, if not in 

direct opposition to them. In reality the dis 

obedience lay with those who, clinging to the letter, 

neglected the spirit of the Papal reform : 

" There was no excuse for their having denounced 

the work of Louvain as a work of c discord and of 

disobedience, nay, even of treason. The truth 

is that Mgr. Mercier was . . . the most com 

prehensive admirer of the idea of Leo XIII. But 

if he has directed it entirely towards the twentieth 

century, if he has instinctively put it into the thick 

of the contemporary conflict, thus making it actual 

and living, if he has transported it into the region 

of proof and criticism, giving it that attitude of 

confidence and boldness in presence of the revelations 

of experience and the warnings of science, all this 

was neither a wilful misreading of the Papal wishes, 

nor a pretence, nor a betrayal, but the steady march 

of a mind that believed the Pope as it did the truth, 

and that ennobled and honoured the Papal directions 

while submitting to them." 1 

1 Deux Centres, etc., p. 60. The writer of the articles reprinted in this 

brochure, draws a contrast between the two centres of the Neo-Scholastic 

movement, Rome and Louvain. He says that Leo XIII. probably never 

meant to establish at Louvain anything more than a * Roman College " on the 

lines of Cornoldi s school at the Gregorian University in Rome. That may 

be and certainly such a college would have been a failure at Louvain ; but, 

whatever Leo s intention in the beginning may have been, it seems certain 

that Mercier s larger and bolder work has been thoroughly in the spirit of 

Leo s ideas, and has always had the warm sympathy and support of the late 

Pontiff. Nor is there much room to doubt that Louvain has been hitherto 

more successful than Rome in teaching, modernizing, popularizing, pro 

pagating the Philosophy of the Schools on the lines indicated by Leo. In 

276 APPENDIX 

Mercier succeeded in putting Philosophy at Louvain 

" into the thick of the contemporary conflict " 

between the various modern systems and sciences, 

and he did so because, from a deep and masterly 

study of the Scholastic Philosophy in the light of 

Modern Science, he was convinced that he saw a 

substantial harmony between the fundamental principles 

of the former and the established conclusions of the latter. 

It was in the various non-Catholic camps of modern 

Science and modem Philosophy that this vigorous 

action of Mercier s, in giving expression to the projects 

of Leo, produced the greatest comment and the most 

profound sensation. The idea that Catholics could 

be disinterested scientists seems to have been regarded 

then as now by many unbelieving scientists as 

a good joke. The determination with which Mercier 

and his Neo- Scholastic friends kept insisting that 

they could and would train disinterested scientists 

and disinterested philosophers in the very heart of 

a Catholic University ; that they meant to " sub 

stitute for the existing patched up peace between 

Science and Faith, an agreement that would be 

steady and yet progressive, interior and regular ; " 

that determination made unbelievers impatient 

that sense the contrast drawn by the Abbe Besse an earnest admirer of the 

Louvain Institute is quite justifiable. But it is also only fair to observe 

that the success of the Louvain Institute is largely due to a combination 

of favourable surroundings which the movement in Rome did not enjoy 

such, for example, as the presence of flourishing faculties of Science and 

Medicine, etc.. with the ablest professors to give special courses in the 

Philosophical Institute ; the presence not only of the best lay professors to 

teach, but of the best lay students to frequent the courses of the Institute in 

company with the ecclesiastics ; the presence of well equipped laboratories ; 

the employment of the vernacular in all their teaching ; the fulness and 

variety of that teaching throughout a three years course ; the superiority 

of their staff in numbers and in qualifications ; the life and reality infused 

into their studies by their attention to the current periodical literature in the 

various departments ; the great intellectual activity and general scientific 

prestige of their University. These circumstances partly, no doubt, of their 

own making at Louvain have already placed the Philosophical Studies of 

the Institute on that higher level which the Roman professors have been 

strenuously endeavouring to reach. 

1 Deux Centres, etc., p. 43. 

SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 277 

and then afraid, lest after all there might not be some 

danger that the Catholics might succeed, and the 

infidel monopoly of " Modern Science " and " Modern 

Philosophy " be unceremoniously interfered with. 

But then the idea of a " Scholastic " revival in 

Philosophy, of a " Thomism " that would be " scien 

tific " ! That, of course, appeared nothing short 

of ludicrous to the enlightened Moderns in their 

blissful ignorance of what Medieval Philosophy was 

and what it contained ! For, what was Medieval 

Philosophy to them ? It was a vast fabric of errors 

multiplied and monumental of errors that were 

grotesque in their puerility, and of distortions of 

fact that were hoary with age ; such was the idol 

that passed for Medieval Philosophy for Schol 

asticism in the minds of " the moderns," and that 

stood unassailed until recent critical researches into 

the history of that period demolished the idol by 

shedding forth a light before which it has crumbled 

into dust. Those historical studies in Medieval 

Philosophy so sadly needed in order to do justice 

to Scholasticism in the eyes of the modern world 

were then and are still being carried on partly in 

Germany, partly in Paris, and partly in Louvain. 

The prominence given to the History of Philosophy 

is one of the features of the Neo-Scholastic programme 

of studies at the Louvain Philosophical Institute. 

Thanks to the very great progress that has been 

made in that department, the moderns are now 

willing to recognise that Medieval Thomism was 

after all something other than a tissue of barren 

speculations and empty formalisms ; that the great 

scholastics were not " a crowd of dogmatic idealists 

trying to construct a world out of the categories of 

speech"; 1 that they were by no means disdainful 

of the observation of facts ; that, on the contrary, 

they were great men and great philosophers who 

^ J)eux Centres, etc., p. 45. 

278 APPENDIX 

have been much misrepresented ; that their system 

of philosophy had been travestied and distorted, 

and then ignorantly ridiculed by the heralds of our 

" Modern Philosophy " : that, in fine, its latest 

presentation to the modern world at the hands of 

the Xeo-Scholastics in its proper historical setting, 

and in close contact with the modern sciences- 

points to this conclusion, that amongst all the philo 

sophical systems in rogue at the present day* the modern 

Scholastic Synthesis, on the line* of Aristotelian 

Animism, is most in harmony wit It the conclusions 

and tendencies of modern physical science. Some 

of the most distinguished scientists have explicitly 

avowed that greater harmony between Science and 

Scholasticism. 1 Catholic scientists can have no 

difficulty about it it is only what they should expect 

but for many non-Catholic scientists such a reve 

lation must be not a little startling. 

In the ranks of the Catholic exponents of the 

traditional Scholasticism the idea of a close alliance 

between the natural sciences and their secluded 

system was looked upon with doubt and suspicion. 

They could not with any good grace oppose the new 

project ; for they. too. professed to believe that in 

Scholasticism there lay concealed in some mysterious 

way a vast treasure of doctrine that could easily 

put to flight the impious modern scientist. But 

they shrank from putting it to the test. They were 

apparently content to guard their " hidden treasure " 

and express a pious opinion about its efficacy. They 

would not ransack it in order to bring forth from it 

" new things and old." 

The fact is that those philosophers did not appre 

ciate the value of the legacy that was bequeathed 

to them from the golden age of Scholasticism and 

that for two reasons : because, firstly, they had 

1 As, for example Wundt in Germany. 

SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 279 

followed the tradition of neglecting the history of 

Philosophy even of the system they studied ; and 

secondly, and consequently, they had more or less 

fallen a prey, quite unconsciously, to the ultra- 

spiritualist views and tendencies of post- Cartesian 

Philosophy. 

In the first place, down to very recent times the 

history of Philosophy was entirely neglected, even 

by philosophers themselves. Those most devoted 

to Philosophy were least devoted to its history. 

Innumerable errors about systems and doctrines 

were the inevitable result. False theories and 

opinions crept into systems and became incorporated 

with them even in the hands of the traditional 

exponents of those systems : witness the false doctrine 

of the migratory species impresses, and other post- 

Renaissance theories, that vitiated and discredited 

later-day Scholasticism. It required the work of 

such recent pioneers in the history of Medieval 

Philosophy as De Wulf, Baeumker, Ehrle, Denifle, 

Mandonnet, Picavet, Clerval, to make even a begin 

ning in dissipating those errors. If the traditional 

exponents of Scholasticism had only attended a 

little to its history the Neo-Scholastics of to-day 

would not have experienced so much trouble in giving 

to the world the authentic philosophical teaching 

of the thirteenth century nor so much opposition 

in proclaiming an alliance between